Sinfonia No.8
Marcus Tristan

Description

Duration: ca. 20′ | Pages: 64 (Score) | Year: 2004-2006 (rev.2026)

I have always had a rather equivocal relationship with the word “Symphony” – my first two were composed using the avant-garde language that I prefer to write in – influences such as my short-time mentors Olivier Messiaen and Oliver Knussen, as well as Stockhausen, Boulez, Threnody-era Penderecki, and Xenakis had (and still do have) a strong part to play in my musical thinking for those works. When it came to Symphonies 3 and 4, though, I was commissioned to write them by groups who would never have been able to play such complex music. So, I came up with a kind of style that would be appropriate for such performers. It was at this point that I started to prefer the Italian word “Sinfonia”, a word associated with early instrumental interludes in music by J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel going through to the period of Haydn and Mozart, both of whom called their symphonies “sinfonias”.
Sinfonia No.8 is the third in a triptych of sinfonias that I composed between 2004 and 2006 for the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra “Klassika” in Russia, another group for whom my more progressive music would not have been appropriate. And this particular sinfonia was commissioned by them to be football-themed, so it is laid out in the form of a cup final football match: First Half, Second Half, Extra Time and, finally, Penalties. It evokes the often very intense environment experienced on the terraces of a cup final match, and, at the end, after the wild celebrations of the winning team’s fans, it pans over to the losing fans, and the music ends with the bittersweet feeling of having to wait yet another year for the chance to be champions.
Marcus Tristan