Quick question: before I cue those 5/4 col legno strokes in Mars at our 7:00 rehearsal, isn’t Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (fifth movement) the earlier famous use, with the strings striking the wood of the bow? What’s considered the earliest widely known orchestral col legno passage?
Berlioz’s Witches’ Sabbath is the first truly famous symphonic ‘col legno’, but an earlier orchestral use pops up in Gluck’s Don Juan (1761) during the infernal scenes: https://imslp.org/wiki/Don_Juan_(Gluck%2C_Christoph_Willibald). If you need a pre‑1830 citation for your rehearsal note before those 5/4 whacks, point to Gluck and add that Berlioz made it mainstream — meme before the meme.