Innocent Merriment

I was listening to Haydn's Drumroll Symphony... yes, I was! Shut up! And I grew curious about the almost modern-sounding melody line at the very beginning, so I thought I'd see if my quaint and trusty old MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC had anything to say about it. Well, sorry to report that they devoted just one short paragraph to that work, containing nothing on the subject which had captured my interest. But! Underneath that paragraph was one on the Toy Symphony (now [and I use the word "now" loosely, considering the relative antiquity of the volume] attributed to Mozart's father), for which the following instrumentation was catalogued: "penny trumpet, quail call, rattle, cuckoo, screech-owl whistle, a little drum (in G), and a little triangle." This, Milton Cross and his associates conclude, makes for "innocent merriment to delight both young and old." It also makes the MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC - Volume I, at least - a book with an owl in it.