Say It with Music

"When words don't work, say it with music."

Joseph Haydn [HIDE-EN] is considered to be the father of the symphony. He composed his first symphony in 1759 at the age of twenty-seven, around the time of Mozart's third birthday. Others had composed works that they called symphonies before that, but it was Haydn who gave the symphony its present structure of four movements. Hayden wrote 107 symphonies. Beethoven, his student, wrote only nine.

His forty-fifth symphony, the Symphony in F-sharp Minor, is known as the Farewell Symphony and is the earliest of Haydn's symphonies to be played regularly today.

The music is beautiful, at times deeply moving, at other times simply lyrical. The forth movement, or the finale, began with strength and passion, as anyone would have expected.