Lecture: "Too Close to the Hereafter: Mahler and the Curse of the Ninth"

Dr. Jacob Bancks, associate professor of music at Augustana and composer, will discuss Gustav Mahler and the “curse of the ninth.”

The Quad City Symphony will perform Mahler's Ninth Symphony in February.

A suspicious number of symphonic composers, including Beethoven, Schubert, and Bruckner, died shortly after completing their ninth symphonies. Apparently, this fact made Gustave Mahler rather nervous, and he delayed his own ninth as long as possible, eventually completing it in 1911. He died shortly thereafter.