Knock On Wood

Just like in baseball, superstitions and pre-performance rituals run rampant in the music world. This goes way, way beyond not changing one’s socks or touching/not touching the plate. See if you can match up the following rituals with their practitioners:

1. Would never begin rehearsing new music on a Friday
2. Walked around with his pants off right up until the moment on stage
3. Requires backstage personnel to say “Don’t F**K it up” to him before going onstage
4. Traveled with a portable altar
5. Crosses himself, then trips himself on his way onstage


A. Conductor Robert Spano
B. Conductor John Barbirolli
C. Maestro Bob Cobb
D. Conductor Alexander Lazarev
E. John Denver


Composers are even worse. Symphonic composers since Beethoven have been loath to compose a ninth symphony because of the “curse of the ninth.” The number of composers that have died after completing, or even in the course of writing, nine symphonies, makes this curse almost as reliable as that of King Tut or the curse of “that Scottish play” by William Shakespeare.

Some of the victims of the “curse of the ninth” include: Beethoven, Dvorak, Vaughan-Williams, and Bruckner. Horribly superstitious, Mahler at first declared that all of his symphonies were "ninths", then referred to Das Lied von der Erde as a song cycle rather than number it as the ninth symphony it would have been. However, he still died after writing his ninth numbered symphony (leaving his tenth unfinished to be completed from his sketches). D’oh! Schubert went the creative numbering route as well and completed his Ninth Symphony, but left the eighth unfinished. Recently, Russian composer Alfred Schnittke died, leaving his ninth unfinished.

The curse, in addition to depression and self-doubt, may have led Sibelius to the destruction of his Eighth Symphony; though the full reason for the musical silence of his final twenty five years has remained a mystery.

A few have survived, such as Shostakovich (fifteen symphonies). Alexander Glazunov stopped work on his ninth due to fear of the curse and never wrote another symphony. He prolonged his life by another twenty six years. Current composer Malcolm Arnold has completed nine symphonies but will not do a tenth.

Now, skeptics can say that to write nine symphonies would logically take years and years of creative genius and that most of these men were old and would have died anyway. The varied ages of these men at the time of their passing would belie that statement, and to you skeptics I give the evil eye, and spit three times in your general direction.