Christ on the Mount of Olives (Beethoven) of the orchestra and chorus at its premiere. He panned Huber's libretto, saying, in an 1824 letter to the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde, "Let us leave out of consideration "the value" of poems of this sort. We all know that allowances are to be made... so far as I am concerned, I would rather set Homer, Klopstock, Schiller to music. If they offer difficulties to overcome, "these immortal poets" at least are worthy of it." (Beethoven eventually did set Schiller to music in his monumental Ninth Symphony, nearly twenty years later.) The editors at Breitkopf & Härtel agreed with Beethoven's critical
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