Haydn Symphony nº 62 Hob. I:60 C major ’Il Distratto’

Camerata Salzburg Roger Norrington This work originated as incidental music to a comic play in five acts centring on the eponymously ’absent-minded’ hero, Leandre. Notwithstanding hypotheses to the contrary, it is the only Haydn symphony that can be documented as having originated as stage music. This unique status correlates both with its oddities of style and with the fact that it is a six-movement symphony — a generic anomaly that in 18th-century Austrian music is found only in overtly programmatic works.5 The first movement served as the overture, the second through fifth as entr’actes, and the last as a kind of ’finale’ after the play was over. The first movement (overture) resembles that to Symphony No. 50, in key, metre, presence of slow introduction, and much else. The one obviously illustrative passage occurs in the second group of the exposition: having landed on a local subdominant, the music tarries there for no fewer than twelve bars, dying away melodical