It is the curse of the 9th symphony: neither Beethoven, Bruckner, Dvořák nor Spohr wrote more than nine symphonies. It is therefore understandable that Gustav Mahler developed an almost panic-stricken fear of this number and renamed his actual 9th Symphony The song of the earth. When he was actually working on his 9th symphony, he justified himself to his wife Alma: "It's actually the tenth, because ‹the song of the earth› is my ninth." As it turned out, the 9th Symphony remained Mahler's last completed work, in which the main motifs of death, farewell and transience run through all four movements.