Symphony No. 60 (Haydn)

The symphony was adapted from incidental music that Haydn composed in 1774 for a German-language performance at Eszterház of a comedy by the French playwright Jean-François Regnard called Le Distrait (The Absent-Minded Gentleman).

To the admiration of connoisseurs and the sheer delight of listeners, he displays masterly variety, switching from the most affected pomposity to low humour, so that H[aydn] and Regnard vie with one another as to who is the more capriciously absent-minded.” Another performance on 22 November in Pressburg itself (now Bratislava, Slovakia) elicited another rave review from the same newspaper: “On Tuesday, St Cecilia’s Day, Der Zerstreute was played.

[2] According to Giovanni Antonini, a conductor who has recorded the symphony, this quotation is Haydn portraying the orchestra performing the incorrect composition due to distraction.

From a theatrical standpoint, this suggests a dialogue between two characters in the play—a well-bred young lady and a carousing soldier[1]—but Haydn had also juxtaposed these types of themes in the slow movements of his 28th and 65th symphonies.

[1] The courtly and pompous minuet is contrasted by the reappearance of the absent-minded main character in the trio,[1] which features an exotically wandering, rising and falling motif over a bagpipe-like drone.

The finale features one of Haydn's famous musical jokes: the energetic prestissimo opening grinds to a sudden halt following a spectacularly discordant orchestral flourish, as the violins discover that they seemingly "need" to retune their strings—which they noisily proceed to do for 10 to 15 seconds before they resume playing.