In 1909, the centenary year of Joseph Haydn's death, Jules Écorcheville commissioned a number of French composers to write short hommages for solo piano dedicated to Haydn for inclusion as part of his journal, La Revue Musicale de la S.I.M. Each of the contributors wrote a short work based on a soggetto cavato whereby H-A-Y-D-N was rendered as B-A-D-D-G. While some of these pieces achieved a degree of popularity, the very fact that they were composed at all hints at an underlying reversal in the reception of Haydn's music away from the general dismissal of his works seen in chapters 1 and 2. This shift coincided with the dawn of a new century and the rise of Modernist aesthetics. As will be argued below, Écorcheville's experiences in Vienna at the 1909 Haydn Zentenarfeier, a gathering of the International Musical Society ostensibly celebrating the centennial of Haydn's death, influenced him to take advantage of a celebratory year to further his larger goal of promoting French scholarship and composition. For Camille Saint-Saëns, the commissions opened up a larger debate about the value of Haydn's music to modern composers.

It is no coincidence that a number of the composers Écorcheville commissioned had favorable views toward Haydn's music. In fact, many had already invoked the composer to promote their own agendas. An interest in Haydn was not a prerequisite for Écorcheville, as is evidenced by his invitations to Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Reynaldo Hahn. Vincent d’Indy, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, and Camille Saint-Saëns were all outspoken supporters of Haydn's music (see table 3.1), although the latter two ended up declining the invitation. The H-A-Y-D-N works themselves have elicited occasional analysis, though it is worth pointing out that they are written in widely varying styles, some of which have little or nothing to do with Haydn's music.

These participants (and nonparticipants) took a close interest in the hommage project for differing reasons. Haydn's music was enjoying increasing appeal within France's rising Neoclassical movement; in the educational establishment via public performances; and, somewhat ironically, among composers with outspoken nationalist views who wished to differentiate their music from that of their German counterparts.