Had Johann Peter Salomon not commissioned Haydn to write twelve symphonies for his concert series in London, he still would have earned his berth in music history by bestowing upon Mozart's last symphony, so the story goes, the nickname “Jupiter.” Vincent Novello described a conversation with Franz Xaver Mozart: “Mozart's son said he considered the Finale to his father's sinfonie in C – which Salomon christened the Jupiter – to be the highest triumph of instrumental composition, and I agree with him.” Indeed, the extraordinary finale, with its density of musical utterance, recalls Mozart's own remark to his father Leopold that the third act of Idomeneo was nearly finished, and that it “will turn out to be at least as good as the first two – in fact, I believe, infinitely better – and I think that it may be said with truth, finis coronat opus.” That the end crowns the work is surely one of the most historically significant features of his “Jupiter” Symphony, which looks forward to such “teleological” works as Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. But the mere fact of a weighty conclusion has been less important in the reception of the work than the high seriousness of fugal technique impinging upon a sonata design, especially the dazzling display of double fugue and canon in the coda. Mozart's last symphony has not lacked for interpreters, as the numerous entries in bibliographies published in the Mozart-Jahrbuch and in Neal Zaslaw's recent book on the Mozart symphonies make clear; yet there are no monographs in English.