Symphony No. 103 in E flat major, Hob.I:103 "Drum Roll"

The symphony opens with a slow introduction unlike almost any other: a single, quiet, sustained roll on the timpani, played alone before any other instrument enters. A dark, searching melody follows in the low strings, and this hushed material returns near the end of the movement before it launches into a vigorous main Allegro section, built from a bouncing theme that keeps circling back on itself.

The second movement is a set of variations on two alternating melodies, one in minor drawn from a Croatian folk tune, one in major, so the mood shifts between plaintive and sunny each time a new variation begins.

The third movement is a minuet, a dance in triple meter with a courtly, swinging gait, framing a gentler central trio section before the dance returns.

The finale opens with a single horn call, a rising four-note figure that becomes the seed for the entire movement. Haydn spins it through the full orchestra with constant energy and wit, driving to a close that answers the mysterious drum roll of the opening with full-throated confidence.

Haydn composed this symphony in London in 1795, during the second of his two triumphant visits to the city, where he wrote a dozen symphonies for enthusiastic public concert audiences rather than for a private aristocratic patron as before. It premiered in London in 1795 at one of the concerts organized by the violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who had brought Haydn to England. The nickname "Drum Roll" comes from the unaccompanied timpani roll that opens the work, a gesture no listener at the time would have expected from a symphony's first bars. The piece was received enthusiastically and has remained one of the most frequently performed of Haydn's later symphonies, valued for its inventive handling of the orchestra and its wit.