Ursa (in C) Major

What do you think of when you hear "The Bear"? Does the title conjure up visions of a lumbering, brutish Daniel Boone type? A trash-raiding creature terrorizing vacationers in Vermont? A stock whose price just refuses to go up? At the risk of betraying my runaway free-association tendencies, I actually think of all three! But before any of the above images come to mind, the very first place I go is to Haydn's Symphony No. 82 in C major, nicknamed "The Bear".

By Charles J. Sharp - Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120317714

More than two dozen of Haydn's one hundred and four Symphonies carry a nickname, and in every case, the name does not originate with Haydn. The de facto title of the Symphony No. 82 comes from the drone-like accompanying figure of the final movement, a low C played twice by the cellos and basses before any other instruments enter. One might think that the name points directly to this moment, a quasi parody of the low growl of a bear foraging for either food scraps or happiness. The reference - made almost fifty years later - is in fact to the figure's resemblance to the type of music played for dancing bears, a common form of street entertainment in 19th Century Europe. If anything, Haydn might well have been mocking the feeble sounds of the dudelsack (a member of the bagpipe family), and not the primal grunt of Goldilocks' nemesis.

Considering this - and the fact that Haydn neither gave the name nor had any specific program in mind that we know of - does my own mental image of an anthropomorphized bear, shifting back and forth between rummaging around a cluttered backyard and lamenting his investment portfolio's poor performance, change at all? Not in the least! The scruffy, almost comical creature of my imagination* isn't going anywhere, and in some ways, he bears (no pun intended) the perfect traits encapsulating everything I love about Haydn's music - a jolly, off-beat facade that belies strength of build and character. Bears mess around a lot, but ultimately take care of business! Here's hoping this upbeat, playful Symphony does for you what it so often does for me: infuses your day with some optimism and the energy to get things done... even if you complain about having to do those things first.

*I have to admit that some part of my mental image has been hijacked by the hero and title character of this Soviet-era cartoon.