Beethoven is well known for the humor he incorporated into his music, but he wasn’t the first. Joseph Haydn, who developed the classical symphony into the form that Beethoven would later extend even further, was quite a jokester himself.

And sometimes his jokes made an important point.

Take his Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor, for example.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:

At that time, Haydn’s patron Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy was resident, together with all his musicians and retinue, at his favorite summer palace at Eszterháza in rural Hungary. The stay there had been longer than expected, and most of the musicians had been forced to leave their wives back at home in Eisenstadt, about a day’s journey away. Longing to return, the musicians appealed to their Kapellmeister for help. The diplomatic Haydn, instead of making a direct appeal, put his request into the music of the symphony: during the final adagio each musician stops playing, snuffs out the candle on his music stand, and leaves in turn, so that at the end, there are just two muted violins left (played by Haydn himself and his concertmaster, Luigi Tomasini). Esterházy seems to have understood the message: the court returned to Eisenstadt the day following the performance.

Here’s a performance of the symphony by the Sinfonia Rotterdam conducted by Conrad van Alphen. I’ve cued it up to start at the last movement, but of course, feel free to skip to the beginning and listen to the entire performance.