Beethoven 8
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by JASPER CROONEN
Richard Strauss Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888)
Iannis Xenakis Empreintes (1975)
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Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1812)
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24.10.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Richard Strauss's Don Juan, Iannis Xenakis's Empreintes and Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 may not rank among the best-known works of their respective composers. Strauss is more commonly associated with his operas and the celebrated tone poems Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and Also sprach Zarathustra. Xenakis is remembered above all for his Poème électronique, created for the Philips Pavilion at Expo 58 – and, to a lesser extent, for Metastaseis, the score that inspired the pavilion's striking architectural design. And, of course, Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is inevitably overshadowed by the monumental Ninth that followed.
That does not make these works any less remarkable. On the contrary, each is worth discovering because it reflects a distinct creative phase in its composer's artistic development.
Finding His Own Voice
Don Juan marks the moment when Strauss truly found his own compositional voice. His earliest works remained relatively conventional in form: two symphonies, a horn concerto and a violin concerto. It was only after befriending the violinist and composer Alexander Ritter in the mid-1880s that he succeeded in breaking free from the constraints of tradition – both the weight of musical history and the influence of his own father, a staunch musical conservative. Ritter, Strauss would later acknowledge, made him into a Wagnerian. More importantly, he awakened in him a profound belief in music's power to evoke vivid images.
During a journey through Italy at this time, Strauss jotted down a series of 'tonal impressions' in the margins of letters to his mother – musical fragments that he later developed into Aus Italien. Musicologist Bryan Gilliam describes the work as Strauss's 'first tentative step into the world of the tone poem'. Encouraged by Ritter, Strauss spent the following years refining his artistic ideals. He believed it was an artist's duty to devise a new form for every new subject, and he found that freedom in the symphonic poem – a genre in which music seeks to portray concrete subjects, often drawn from literature or the visual arts.
Although Don Juan was not Strauss's first tone poem – that distinction belongs to Macbeth (1888) – it was the first to be performed. Its première in Weimar was a major event. Strauss won acclaim as a conductor, but audiences were especially captivated by the originality of his music. The audacious choice of Don Juan as protagonist and, above all, the vividness with which Strauss translated the legendary seducer into sound established his reputation as a musical modernist. Having found his ideal form, he would go on to compose a succession of landmark tone poems, including Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben.
A Return to the Source
Empreintes (1975) may be regarded as Xenakis's work of return. The techniques and ideas it explores had formed the foundation of his compositional language since the 1950s, most notably his use of amorphous sound masses and the concept of 'transformation', first articulated in his essay Les Métastassis and realised in his breakthrough work Metastaseis. Musicologist Peter Hoffmann summarises this approach as 'the continuous evolution of large-scale glissando structures on the one hand, and the abrupt transpositions and permutations of pitch on the other'.
From the 1960s onwards, however, Xenakis increasingly turned his attention to new mathematical theories. In particular, stochastic processes – mathematical models that calculate the probability of events occurring within a series of random phenomena – became central to his compositional thinking. He outlined the relationship between mathematics and music in his influential book Formalized Music and applied these principles in many of his works. At the same time, he became increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of electroacoustic music.
Empreintes can be considered a return because it is written exclusively for acoustic instruments and because Xenakis once again places glissandi at the heart of his musical language. Throughout large sections of the score, performers – particularly the strings and brass – are not given fixed pitches but only upper and lower limits, between which they must move in one continuous, fluid gesture. Against these expansive sonic movements, Xenakis sets repetitive, rhythmic staccato cells built on a single repeated note. In the booklet accompanying the work's recording, Nouritza Matossian describes this striking juxtaposition as 'a combination of two extreme viewpoints. In the first, it is as though we are looking at a diorama depicting a vast landscape, with distant horizons and skies and indistinct forms in the foreground, some lit from below and behind, like alto and cirrus clouds at sunset. In the second, we find ourselves inside what appears to be an industrial process, overhearing the accompanying stream of data communication.' Poetic though this image may be, the exact sciences are never far from Xenakis's music.
One Final Glance Back
If Strauss's Don Juan marks a beginning and Xenakis's Empreintes a return, Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 represents an ending. Not because of the music itself, but because of the circumstances in which it was composed. Around the time of its première in 1812, Beethoven was enduring a period of considerable personal turmoil. He tried unsuccessfully to prevent what he considered the unsuitable marriage of his younger brother, reluctantly resigned himself to a life without a partner, struggled with serious financial difficulties, and in the years that followed became embroiled in a bitter legal battle over the guardianship of his nephew Karl.
By the time Beethoven had come to terms with these personal trials, almost a decade later, he had become a different man – and a different composer. In many respects, the Eighth Symphony stands as his final statement in an earlier musical language. It playfully recalls the metrical wit of Haydn's 'Clock' Symphony and replaces the customary scherzo with a graceful Tempo di Menuetto. As a whole, the symphony is more refined, gentler, and less exuberant and tempestuous than listeners might expect from Beethoven.
Although Beethoven had already spent years quietly expanding the boundaries of the symphonic tradition, this work feels like one last affectionate glance over his shoulder. For a final time, he embraced convention before pulling the pin from the grenade with his Ninth Symphony, transforming the genre forever. Or, as musicologists Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson put it in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: 'Beethoven could hardly have devised a warmer gesture of farewell before taking leave of the symphony – for the time being.'
