Friedrich Schiller van Beethoven said that a great poem is more difficult to set to music than a merely good one because the composer must rise higher than the poet – "who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much easier," wrote Beethoven. There are relatively few famous musical settings of Schiller's poems. Notable exceptions are Beethoven's setting of "An die Freude" ("Ode to Joy") in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, Johannes Brahms' choral setting of "Nänie" and "Des Mädchens Klage" by Franz Schubert, who set 44 of Schiller's poems as Lieder, mostly for
Curse of the ninth Curse of the ninth The curse of the ninth is a superstition connected with the history of classical music. In essence, it is the belief that a ninth symphony is destined to be a composer's last; "i.e." that the composer will be fated to die while or after writing it, or before completing a tenth. To those who give credence to the notion, a composer who produces a ninth symphony has reached a decisive landmark, and to then embark on a tenth is a challenge to fate. This folk-notion persists in popular journalism, and is not supported in musicology or