This symphony has the usual number of four movements for a classical symphony (in the tonic
G major unless otherwise specified): The first movement is a
gigue in
sonata form and quotes a melody from a song in
Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera
Le diable à quatre called "Je n'aimais pas le tabac beaucoup" ("I didn't like tobacco much"). The final movement, also in sonata form, subtitled
La tempesta, was intended to evoke the sensation of a thunderstorm. In the first movement, the strings start with the main eight-bar melody, a theme which carries throughout the entire movement. Haydn makes use of the concerto grosso format in the second movement, with the melody in the
concertino – two solo violins and solo violoncello. The melody of the menuet is fairly conventional, with the bassoon, violone, and strings taking up the theme in the trio. In the final movement,
La tempesta (the storm), the strings have a series of descending figures which suggest falling rain, and octave leaps in the solo violin are used to build tension. An interesting anecdote about the theme of the flute in this movement: When Haydn describes a storm in his last
oratorio,
The Seasons, he uses the same theme as in this movement, with the same orchestration – passage in the flute of descending broken chord. == See also ==