The Symphony No. 30 in C major

C major

C major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....

, Hoboken I/30, is a symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

 by Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 composed in 1765. It is nicknamed the Alleluia Symphony because of Haydn's use of a Gregorian

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

 Alleluia

Alleluia

The word "Alleluia" or "Hallelujah" , which at its most literal means "Praise Yah", is used in different ways in Christian liturgies....

 chant in the opening movement.

Description

The Alleluia chant of the first movement has been confused with the principal melodic line in the finale of Mozart's Symphony No. 41 in C major

Symphony No. 41 (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788. It was the last symphony that he composed.The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony...

. Mozart did use this Alleluia chant melody for his Alleluia Canon, K. 533, written shortly after he completed his C major symphony.

The work is scored for flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

, two oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...

s, bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

, two horn

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

s, trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

s, timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, and strings

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

 with continuo. The use of timpani in this symphony remains an unresolved matter. In his cycle, for example, Antal Dorati

Antal Doráti

Antal Doráti, KBE was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1947.-Biography:...

 omits them. Several more recent performances, however, have included timpani.

The work is in three movements:

1. Allegro, 4/4
2. Andante, 2/4 in G major
3. Tempo di Menuet
   Minuet
   A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
   
   , piu tosto allegro, 3/4

The Alleluia motif dominates the first movement. It's the first theme; the second theme is also derived from it and it's also included in the closing material of the exposition. In the development, after the first theme is restated, the first three notes of the motif (do-re-mi) are repeated seven times at different pitch levels against sixteenth-note accompaniment.

The second movement contains numerous solo concertante

Sinfonia concertante

Sinfonia concertante is a musical form that emerged during the Classical period of Western music. It is essentially a mixture of the symphony and the concerto genres: a concerto in that one or more soloists are on prominent display, and a symphony in that the soloists are nonetheless discernibly a...

 passages for the flute. The rare choice of the dominant key for a second movement (subdominant was more common in Haydn) was likely because G major was a favorable key for the flute. Another Haydn symphonic movement which contains the solo flute to an even greater degree is 24/ii

Symphony No. 24 (Haydn)

Joseph Haydn wrote Symphony No. 24 in D major, Hoboken I/24, in 1764.The work is scored for flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, and strings with continuo.The work is in four movements:# Allegro, 4/4# Adagio, 3/4# Menuet - Trio, 3/4# Allegro, 4/4...

.