Symphony No. 63 (Haydn)

It is often known by the title of the second movement, La Roxelane, named for Roxelana, the influential wife of Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.

This second movement was originally part of Haydn's incidental music for Charles Simon Favart's stage work Soliman der zweite (or Les Trois Sultanes) in which Roxelana was a character.

Part of the reason for this rescoring was the departure of bassoonist Ignatz Drobny from Eszterháza, leaving Haydn's orchestra with only one bassoon.

The first version of the finale is based on an old fragment from c. 1769–73 and is viewed by some musicologists as a stop-gap to perhaps complete the symphony early to fulfill the need for a performance.

[1] This was done by transforming the curtain-raising transitional ending into one that is more cadential, adding the appropriate expositional repeats to conform more to sonata form and transposing one of the overture's two bassoon parts up an octave so that it could be played by the flute.