The Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, known as the Great, is the final symphony completed by Franz Schubert. It was originally nicknamed The Great C major to distinguish it from his other C major symphony, his sixth, the Little C major (http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=5,5,3,1,8,http://www.abdn.ac.uk/music/19cmaterials/lec5romsym.htm), but the nickname is now often taken to refer to the symphony's length and majesty. A typical performance takes around 55 minutes.

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor is the last Symphony upon which he worked, leaving the last movement incomplete at the time of his death in 1896. The symphony was premiered under Ferdinand Löwe in Vienna in 1903, after Bruckner's death. Bruckner dedicated this symphony "to the beloved God" (in German, "dem lieben Gott").

Symphony No. 9 in E Minor was written by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in the years 1956-1957 and premiered under conductor Malcolm Sargent in April 1958, when the composer was 85. Vaughan Williams’s original idea was to create a programmatic symphony based on Thomas Hardy's book Tess of the D'Urbervilles, even though the programmatic elements eventually disappeared as work on the composition progressed. Existing sketches clearly indicate that in the early stages of composition, certain passages relate to specific people and events in the novel.