Haydn's Symphony "The Queen"

We continue publishing these commentaries on the classical music broadcast from the Radio Orient station at half past seven every Wednesday evening:

This evening we present a piece by the enchanting musician Joseph Haydn, who lived in the eighteenth century, entitled "The Queen." It is for Marie Antoinette, whom the composer had known in Vienna before she became queen, and whose elegance and charm he admired without reserve.

This symphony begins slowly and then bursts into two themes — a rule Haydn followed in most of the symphonies he composed, of which he has more than a hundred; and Haydn acknowledges that this method was suggested to him by Bach, the founder of Western music. We notice that when it bursts into the two themes, the orchestra consists, in addition to the stringed instruments, of a single flute, two horns, and two clarinets. And if we listen closely, we hear the fundamental melody that Haydn loves passing from the violin to the flute. In this piece there is one theme — the refrain — which appears to us more than three times in its course.

If we keep the title of this symphony always in mind, we can accompany the music in what it sought to picture for us of beauty, softness, and allurement in an aristocratic, romantic life.