The "Symphony No.9 Problem" and what next?

[Dundonnell]

(Not sure if this is the correct place for this thread but here goes anyway......)

Jolly Roger suggested a thread centred around the Symphony No.9 post Beethoven and how composers either face up to the issue or avoid it and what comes next ;D

So..I shall start with a bit of a list(surprise, surprise ;D)

Composers who wrote a Ninth Symphony post Beethoven (selective list only; * indicates last symphony composed)

Schubert: Great C major*
Dvorak:    "New World"*
Bruckner:  unfinished*
Mahler
Havergal Brian
Vaughan Williams*
Edmund Rubbra: Sinfonia Sacra
George Lloyd
Daniel Jones
Robert Simpson
Alun Hoddinott
Malcom Arnold*
Peter Maxwell Davies*
Egon Wellesz*
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Alexander Moyzes
Rued Langgaard
Vagn Holmboe
Niels-Viggo Bentzon
Eduard Tubin
Kalevi Aho
Darius Milhaud
Hans Werner Henze
Julius Rontgen
Henk Badings
Laszlo Lajtha*
Gianfrancesco Malipiero
Janis Ivanovs
Harald Saeverud*
Alexander Tansman
Andrzej Panufnik
Nikolai Miaskovsky
Dmitri Shostakovich
Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Alfred Schnittke*
Kurt Atterberg*
Allan Pettersson
Roy Harris
Roger Sessions*
William Schuman
Vincent Persichetti*
Peter Mennin*
David Diamond
Philip Glass

Now, one question is how many of these are towering masterpieces ??? The Schubert, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, RVW, Rubbra, Panufnik, Simpson jump immediately to my mind. The Pettersson ??? probably. The Mennin ???

How many-like the Shostakovich-deliberately or accidentally make no attempt to be so ???

How many 9ths should have been the composer's last symphony ??? ;D The Harris ??? The Glass ;D ???

[dyn]

It seems like a lot of composers didn't have a "Symphony No. 9 problem"—eg Raff whose 9th symphony is not particularly exceptional in any way. If anything composers immediately after Beethoven had problems writing symphonies at all—composers with the "Symphony No. 1 problem" might include Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Berlioz, possibly Liszt, Strauss, Wagner and so forth. Many of these First Symphonies either reference Beethoven's Ninth in some way or attempt to skirt around Beethoven altogether.

The first composer who really seemed to exhibit a Symphony No. 9 complex was Mahler. After that the phenomenon really took off with composers finding a variety of approaches to the "magic number", from the old choral-masterpiece trick (Rubbra, Atterberg, Henze, etc) to the farewell-to-life thing (Arnold—Schnittke doesn't quite count, having been saying his farewells for three symphonies and a couple of cello concertos already :P) to the subversion-of-expectations (Shostakovich, in what must have been intended as a slap in the face to Soviet authorities, and was certainly taken that way by them). Still, other composers continued to treat the Ninth as just another symphony. I don't think there's anything particularly exceptional about e.g. Holmboe's, Malipiero's, Milhaud's, Pettersson's, Derek Bourgeois's, Leif Segerstam's ;D etc (at least in terms of scale or affect relative to the rest of their output. I happen to like Holmboe's 9th quite a lot for instance, but I don't think the number had any special significance to him).

[jimfin]

Both Shostakovich and George Lloyd definitely made a decision *not* to write a big final ninth: Shostakovich was under great pressure from the Soviet authorities to write a communist rival to Beethoven, and Lloyd felt the social pressure, and both wrote light, cheeky little works that might better be called sinfoniettas.

[Dundonnell]

I think that are both hitting the nail right on the head :)

[Neil McGowan]

Shostakovich was under great pressure from the Soviet authorities to write a communist rival to Beethoven

True - but the reasons for him doing otherwise are almost certainly connected with mere accident of date. Shostakovich began writing the 9th in January 1945, when the USSR had been ground into utter misery by long years of war. The obligatory promises of victory - although yearned for by the populace - were losing their power to rally public morale. It seems very likely that Shostakovich originally intended it to be a War Symphony, with mixed emotions of suffering and defiance.

"Along with every creative spirit in the USSR, I'm motivated by an evanescent dream of a full-scale piece that would express the feelings everyone in our country now shares. The only possible outcome of the labours we've undergone, and will continue to undergo, can be in the word 'Victory'"

But he put the work aside during the closing months of war, as the Red Army harried the Wehrmacht across Poland and into Germany itself. The news of Hitler's capitulation on May 8th (announced on May 9th in Russia, due to the time-difference) was jubililantly received, but with an element of mistrust - could it really be so?  Was there no chance of rogue German units defying Berlin's orders?

It's clear Shostakovich substantially rewrote the symphony, in the light of the atmosphere of hope in May 1945. He had previously said the symphony would include extensive sections for vocal soloists and chorus - and yet there are none in the finished symphony. Were they ever drafted?  It seems almost certain he must have had specific texts in mind? He began work again on 26th July - when the USSR had already beaten the Third Reich.

The light and joyful mood of the music was attacked by Soviet critics - who had presumably expected a breast-beating hymn of praise to Stalin. It enjoyed the bizarre fate of being both a candidate for the 1946 Stalin Prize, and being banned altogether in 1948 (presumably in a fit of the sulks, that DSCH hadn't produced a triumphalist Soviet tub-thumper after the war in the intervening three years, and didn't appear to be planning one).  DSCH's failure to include a sung text in the 9th appears to have become the bone of contention retrospectively - the Party Faithful were too foolish to appreciate the music alone - they needed proof of good intention, in some appropriately smarmy lyrics praising Stalin).

My own feeling here is that Shostakovich misread the runes?  He'd expected that the Party would expect joy and celebration at the end of the war. But in fact they intended to use the topic of 'Great Patriotism'  (to this day, WW2 is known in Russia as The Great Patriotic War) as a stick to beat the people.  Private grief was hijacked for popular promotion of The Great Leader, and the individual achievements of the military leaders who had won the war in reality (most especially Marshall Zhukov) were swept under the carpet - all glory for the victory was allocated to Stalin alone. (This was, of course, largely prompted by Stalin's ever-present psychosis about the possibility of being unseated by heroes closer to the People's heart - Zhukov was not only ignored, but actually disgraced later, and dismissed from all his official positions). From summer of 1945 until Stalin's death in 1954, the image of Stalin as "the Great War Victor" became the central and universal plank of Soviet ideology. No other outlets of public feeling were to be permitted.

[dholling]

I would also add Glazunov's unfinished Ninth here, for it shows the composer on an advanced melodic language (and yet shows that his best years were quite far behind him). Yudin's orchestration captures the bleak mood of the original piano score perfectly.

Skulte's Ninth is also worth a mentioning.

[Jolly Roger]

Dundonnell has produced an amazing list..And every composer has a different story and set of circumstances.
The "ninth symphony syndrome" did affect some composers as cited in public statements, and not all were Beethoven admirers.
IMHO,this syndrome generally took the form of "this will be my greatest work" and/or "my last message to the living" or "I will satirize the idea".
Apparently it did not deter many composers from composing no 10 (even Mahler had the essence of it). But his death only added to the legend, especially since no 9 was such a absolutely glorious "swan song".
Composers such as Simpson (whose 9th is his best) were not immune from it. Brian's ninth I do not know but will hear it soon. Holmboe hesitated to call his ninth by number and named it Sinfonia in Memoriam, but wrote no 13 when he was 85. Vaughan Williams 9 is enigmatic and IMHO his most unusual.

Dundonnell has graciously asterisked the composers whose 9th was the last, it would be useful to know the composers age,date and if it was their last orchestral composition as personal events and political circumstances would obviously shape the music.
On another note, did we miss Hovhaness? I have not heard his 9th, but since he produced symphonies like popcorn, I would not expect it to be anything especially memorable. Another 10 plus symphony composer is Daniel Jones, who I have been listening to lately thanks to elroel and the archives.
In any event, there is so much to chew on here.

[JimL]

1953, Neil.  Stalin (and Prokofiev, on the same day) died in 1953, not '54.

[Neil McGowan]

1953, Neil.  Stalin (and Prokofiev, on the same day) died in 1953, not '54.

Whoops!  Slip of the fingers from me there, Jim :(