The Symphony Where Players Snuffed Their Candles and Left

A summer that went on too long

In 1772 Joseph Haydn was music director at the court of the Esterházy family, among the grandest nobles in Hungary. His employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, loved music and liked to spend long stretches with his orchestra at Eszterháza, the lavish summer palace he had built in the Hungarian countryside.

The trouble lay with the musicians. The palace had little room for their families, so most of them had to leave their wives and children at home in Eisenstadt. That year the prince stayed far longer than planned, and the players went months without seeing their families.

According to Haydn's early biographers Griesinger and Dies, who said they heard it from Haydn himself, he decided to make the point with music instead of words.

Two violins left at the end

The result was Symphony No. 45, written in F-sharp minor, a key almost never used for symphonies at the time. Its finale races along and then suddenly stops, and a new, slow section begins.

In that slow section the score is strangely built. Instrument by instrument, each player reaches a last note and has nothing more to do. Haydn wrote the departures into the music, and the players, it is said, put out their candles and left one at a time. In the end only two violins remain on stage, finishing the piece very softly. One story says one of the two was Haydn himself.

As the story goes, the prince understood, and the next day the court made ready to return to Eisenstadt. The symphony has been known ever since as the "Farewell."

What the listener hears

Listening today, you can clearly hear the sound thinning out instrument by instrument. The full ensemble grows slimmer until it seems only two threads are left. If you listen to a recording, close your eyes and count which instruments have gone.