This three-movement symphony begins with an Allegro di molto launched by three rather pompous but brief pronouncements, after which the main melodic matter races off as if from a starting gate. The short "pronouncement" phrase keeps interrupting the music's progress, and C.P.E. Bach takes special delight in contrasting loud music with soft, and causing fast passages thick with notes to stop dead with sudden rests.

Ultimately everything pulls up short and is replaced by an initially sepulchral Larghetto. Here emerges a noble funeral procession. Bach inserts a long shake at critical points in the melody, and although the effect seems mildly comic today, in the composer's time the shakes no doubt intensified the grave emotion of the music. Far sunnier is the concluding Presto (there are no minuets in this set of symphonies). It's a rapid, chipper piece, but ends in only two minutes—hardly long enough to establish itself in the ear.

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