Until the 1780's, most of Haydn’s symphonies had been destined for the court of his employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Although he often felt imprisoned in his job as Kapellmeister, stuck in the small-town and rural atmospheres of the Prince’s two main residences at Eisenstadt and Eszterháza, south-east of Vienna, Haydn’s reputation had nevertheless spread far and wide. Paris in particular held a soft spot for his music, to the extent that in 1785 he was commissioned to write six symphonies for a French aristocrat, the Comte d’Ogny. The result, numbers 82 to 87, were completed by the following year. Two more symphonies (88 and 89) ended up in Paris in 1789, sold to a French publisher by the violinist/businessman Johann Tost.