Synopsis

Composers can be quite superstitious about numbers. Gustav Mahler, for example, was reluctant to assign the number 9 to his song cycle symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, fearing it would turn out to be his last: after all, Beethoven and Bruckner had only completed nine symphonies. Ironically, Mahler did go on to complete a ninth, but died before he could finish work on his tenth.

Most American composers have avoided this problem by rarely if ever producing more than one or two symphonies of their own. Naturally there are exceptions.

On today’s date in 1963, the Symphony No. 9 of American composer Roy Harris was given its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, who had commissioned it. Like many other symphonies by Harris, his Symphony No. 9 has a patriotic program, with each movement having a subtitle from either the American Constitution or Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Harris went on to write thirteen symphonies in all — although, perhaps submitting to a bit of numerological superstition himself — when his symphony No. 13, a bicentennial commission, was first performed in Washington, D.C. in 1976, it was billed as his Symphony No. 14!

Music Played in Today's Program

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 9; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60597

Roy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 9; Albany Symphony; David Alan Miller, conductor; Albany 350