Haydn, "Farewell" Symphony

An unconventional labor protest 

The contract signed by Joseph Haydn with Prince Paul Anton Esterházy on May 1, 1761, contains fourteen articles. A cursory review of some of them reveals the social appreciation that the Old Regime had of musicians.

Article 2 committed Haydn to "behave as befits an honorable official of the princely house," as well as to "avoid all brutality against his subordinates," and to "ensure that his subordinates, and himself, always wear his work uniform." Article 3 demanded "to avoid all vulgarity by eating, drinking and in any other circumstance." Article 4 (which fortunately never applied to Haydn) required that his music could not cross the limits of the prince's domain. Article 5 obliged Haydn "to appear twice a day in the antechamber to find out whether His Highness is ready for a musical audition or not." And so it goes on.

Despite all this, the maestro born in the vicinity of Vienna on March 31, 1732, did not hesitate for a moment to sign the contract and thus ended up joining the Esterházy family, gratefully serving Prince Paul Anton and later Prince Nikolas, a brother of the former, for almost thirty years.

But not always everything went wonderfully. The summer of 1772 was long and with a generous climate, so the prince extended his stay in the palace. Much of the musicians at his court came from Eisenstadt, where they had left their families. They wanted to go back, but how to tell Nikolas? Not even Haydn himself could have requested it — at least not in words —, so he decided to do it through music, devising an ad-hoc piece: Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor, later known as Farewell Symphony.

To achieve his goal, the final movement of the work necessarily had to be slow, so in the fourth and last movement, suddenly, after a coda that seemed to lead to the conclusion, Haydn added an unusual adagio, a deliberate anticlimax.

The full story is told by actor Peter Ustinov in the superb video below.

I'm just adding here the sequence of withdrawal of the instrumentalists:
Second file violins - First oboe and second horn - bassoon - second oboe and first horn - double basses - cellos - violins (except those in the first row) - viola. The violins of the first rank remain until the end because they are in charge of finishing the work. As they retire, the musicians play a brief solo, although there are some who leave without saying goodbye: the bassoon and the cellos.