The audience tittered. 

Jim Mason and I exchanged glances, while tittering along with the rest of the audience.

Did we just hear what we thought we heard?

It was near the end of the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, the slow Largo Cantabile. It’s one of the symphonies Joseph Haydn composed specially for his trip to London as part of his contract with Johann Peter Salomon who had convinced him to make the trip because London was going gaga over Haydn’s music. So clearly Haydn wanted to put his best foot forward and make a good impression on his London fans.

And yet there it was, as the music of that lovely slow movement quieted down to a pianissimo, the bassoons blared out with a fortissimo—there’s really no other way to describe it—fart joke.

Well, listen for yourself. Here’s the final minute or so of that movement as played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Eugen Jochum.

Different conductors interpret it in different ways, of course. On that Saturday night of April 2, 1983, Erich Leinsdorf had the bassoonists of the Philadelphia Orchestra cut one loose. Hence, the tittering.

I’m sure that’s what Haydn wanted.

In fact Antony Hodgson has argued that “if, in concert, none of the audience laughs, then the episode must have been underplayed.” 

Remember that the next time you watch Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles. Haydn did it first.