quoting Dr W. H. Cummings.]

Haydn's first concert, we have said, was an immense success.
Burney records that his appearance in the orchestra "seemed to
have an electrical effect on all present, and he never remembered
a performance where greater enthusiasm was displayed." A wave of
musical excitement appears to have been passing through London,
for on this very evening both Covent Garden and Drury Lane
Theatres were packed with audiences drawn together by the
oratorio performances there. Haydn was vastly pleased at having
the slow movement of his symphony encored--an unusual occurrence
in those days--and he spoke of it afterwards as worthy of mention
in his biography. Fresh from the dinner-table, the audience
generally fell asleep during the slow movements! When the novelty
of the Salomon concerts had worn off, many of the listeners
lapsed into their usual somnolence. Most men in Haydn's position
would have resented such inattention by an outburst of temper.
Haydn took it good-humouredly, and resolved to have his little
joke.

The "Surprise" Symphony

He wrote the well-known "Surprise" Symphony. The slow movement of
this work opens and proceeds in the most subdued manner, and at
the moment when the audience may be imagined to have comfortably
settled for their nap a sudden explosive fortissimo chord is
introduced. "There all the women will scream," said Haydn, with
twinkling eyes. A contemporary critic read quite a different
"programme" into it. "The 'Surprise,'" he wrote, "might not be
inaptly likened to the situation of a beautiful shepherdess who,