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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,
lulled to slumber by the murmur of a distant waterfall, starts
alarmed by the unexpected firing of a fowling-piece." One can
fancy the composer's amusement at this highly-imaginative
interpretation of his harmless bit of waggery.
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