After the successes of the 1791 and 1792 concert seasons in London, Haydn would have been happy to stay abroad. Instead, Prince Anton Esterházy called Haydn back to Austria, where he spent the next eighteen months. During that interval, among other activities, Haydn gave some lessons to the young Ludwig van Beethoven.

Haydn arranged a second London visit as soon as he could, and he began composing more symphonies in advance of his second trip, which began in February 1794. In all, he composed six more symphonies, bringing his “London” set to twelve and capping his lifetime total at 104. Most of the second batch of “London” symphonies added clarinets to the orchestration, and several featured notable effects that inspired nicknames for the works, as in the percussion arsenal of the “Military” Symphony (No. 100), the tick-tock accompaniment of “The Clock” (No. 101), and the timpani lead-in that begins the “Drum Roll” (No. 103).

Haydn stayed in London through the 1795 spring season. His original presenter, Johann Peter Salomon, ceased his concert series that year, so Haydn joined with the “Opera Concerts” mounted by the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, whose even larger orchestra numbered around sixty players. The Symphony No. 103 debuted on Viotti’s series on March 2, 1795.

London audiences were known to love a good spectacle (this was the city, after all, that had recently mounted a revival of Handel’s Messiah with 800 performers), and Haydn seemed to cater to their tastes with the bold and striking effects of his final symphonies. The introduction of the Symphony No. 103, with its ominous drum roll and suspenseful introduction, sets the stage for the boisterous body of the movement, which enters in what at first seems the wrong key, and which bounces along in a syncopated 6/8 rhythm that obscures, for some time, exactly where the downbeat falls.

The slow movement takes the form of a double set of variations, alternating between variations on the initial minor-key theme and separate variations on a contrasting major-key theme. In the minuet, melodic echoes playfully elongate the opening statements, while the contrasting trio section uses cascading entrances to put a different spin on the echo effect.

In a bookend to the exposed start of the symphony, the finale opens with an unaccompanied horn call figure, a motive that evokes hunting parties and the Austrian countryside where Haydn spent so many years in the service of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. The main theme, with its prominent repeating notes, is in fact similar to a Croatian folk song that Haydn may have heard during his long residencies at Eszterháza, Prince Nikolaus’ country palace near the Austrian-Hungarian border.

Aaron Grad ©2013