Toy Symphony

The Toy Symphony (full title: Cassation in G major for toys, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings and continuo) is a musical work dating from the 1760s with parts for toy instruments, including toy trumpet, ratchet, bird calls (cuckoo, nightingale and quail), Mark tree, triangle, drum and glockenspiel. It has three movements and typically takes around seven minutes to perform.

Long taken to be a work of Joseph Haydn, subsequent scholarship has suggested it to be that of Leopold Mozart, Joseph Haydn's younger brother Michael Haydn, or most recently (1996) the Austrian Benedictine monk Edmund Angerer (1740–1794). If Angerer's manuscript (from 1765, entitled "Berchtolds-Gaden Musick") is the original, the Toy Symphony was originally written not in G but in C major. There is reason to believe that the true composer will likely never be known, in whole or in part, given its confused origins and the paucity of related manuscript sources.

Other works for toy instruments
The cassation described above was one of a number of anonymous toy symphonies composed at Berchtesgaden near Salzburg, then a manufacturing centre for toy instruments. Some of the instruments used for these can be seen in the Museum Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg.

Other toy symphonies, overtures and works for ensembles by named composers include:
 * Felix Mendelssohn: Two Kindersymphonie (1827, 1828)
 * Bernhard Romberg: Symphonie burlesque, 'Toy Symphony', op. 62 (first published 1852)
 * Ignaz Lachner: Toy Symphony, op. 85 (circa 1850s)
 * August Conradi: Christmas Overture for piano and five toy instruments (1860s?)
 * Henri Kling (1842-1918): Kitchen Symphony
 * Cornelius Gurlitt: Kindersymphonie, op.169 (1890)
 * Carl Reinecke: Kinder-Symphonie, 'Toy Symphony', op.239 (1895)
 * Emma Lomax: Toy Overture (1915)
 * Adam Carse: Childhood's Happy Days, a Toy Suite for piano and seven toy instruments
 * Malcolm Arnold: Toy Symphony, op. 62 (1957)
 * Joseph Horovitz: Jubilee Toy Symphony (1977)
 * Christopher Brown: Toy Symphony (1986)
 * Stephen Montague: A Toy Symphony, for six amateur performers and chamber orchestra (1999)
 * Tod Machover: Toy Symphony (2002)

Malcolm Arnold's Toy Symphony was first performed at a Savoy Hotel fund raising dinner in London on 28 November 1957, with toy instruments played by a group of eminent composers, musicians and personalities, including Thomas Armstrong, Edric Cundell, Gerard Hoffnung, Eileen Joyce, Steuart Wilson and Leslie Woodgate. Similarly, the Jubilee Toy Symphony by Joseph Horowitz was composed for the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977 and featured Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Richard Baker, Joseph Cooper, Humphrey Burton, James Blades, Fenella Fielding, Nigel Kennedy, Yehudi Menuhin, Steve Race and Malcolm Williamson, among others. Tod Machover's piece deploys custom musical toys as electronic controllers.