The Creation

The Background

In May 1791, on his first visit to London, Haydn went to a series of Handel memorial concerts in Westminster Abbey, where he heard more than a thousand musicians perform Messiah, Israel in Egypt and parts of Esther and Judas Maccabeus. He was very impressed, not only by the royal honour accorded the composer but also by the music, particularly the “Hallelujah” chorus, during which he is said to have wept like a child and exclaimed, “He is the master of us all!” Four years later, on his second visit to London, he was offered an oratorio libretto compiled - possibly by Handel’s late associate, Thomas Linley - from Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Handel had apparently turned it down and so, for the moment, did Haydn, who though it too long and his own understanding of English not good enough.

He did, however, take the libretto to Vienna, where he handed it over to the court librarian, Baron von Swieten, to see what he could do with it. Van Swieten, amateur musician as well as literary man, whose pioneer enthusiasm for baroque music had had considerable influence on Mozart’s development, and who wrote symphonies “as stiff as he was” (according to Haydn), was a good choice. He not only prepared the libretto - cutting it into shape, translating it into German, adding more bits of his own to the English and German versions - but also made sure that Haydn would be richly rewarded for his composition.

So in 1796 Haydn was able to start work on The Creation, apparently setting the German and English texts at the same time. It took him until April 1798 to complete it. According to his own account, he spent such a long time on it so that it would live all the longer. He sketched and re-sketched and revised with far more industry than was normal even for him. “I was never more pious than during the time I was working on The Creation,” he once said. “Every day I fell to my knees and prayed God to give me strength for my work.” When inspiration failed he would get up from the piano and pray again. The rewards for his piety, apart from the money, were the enormously successful first performances (in private) in Vienna in April and May 1798, the triumphant first public performance in the Burgtheater in March 1799, the early welcome given it in all the major musical centres in Europe, and its lasting popularity.

“Not from me but from above,” said Haydn on the great occasion of the performance of The Creation in honour of his 76th birthday in the Redoutensaal in 1808 when Princess Esterhazy put her shawl round his frail shoulders to protect him from the draught and Beethoven kissed his hands and brow. He had achieved his Handelian ambition.

Part One

The reason why Handel turned down the libretto is not difficult to find: there is little drama in it, little conflict, much good and little evil. Haydn, too, must have been aware of the dangers of uniformity and predictability. Certainly, he was industrious about avoiding them, for he made much of every opportunity for a change of colour and, most enterprisingly, expanded the classical key pattern with a progression of his own. In Part One, where there are basic contrasts and even conflicts in the libretto, the key system is relatively conventional - but only after the orchestral introduction, which must be the boldest harmonic adventure in eighteenth century music.

The opening “Representation of Chaos” is so far ahead of its time, in fact, that it anticipates the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in its shifting harmonies, it chromatic melodic line, its phrases crossing the bar lines apparently regardless. Significantly, in the restless modulations within the basic C minor context, the one key not touched on is C major, not even in the prophetic orderliness of the middle section. The recitative for Raphael (the bass among the three soloists) is in C minor, too, with material from “Chaos” carried over to accompany him. The thinking behind this becomes clear after the first entry of the chorus when, in a monumentally effective outburst for full orchestra and chorus together, the first sustained C major harmonies so radiantly illuminate the words “and there was light”.

A large proportion of the variety offered by the libretto is in the next movement. Beginning with Ariel’s aria “Now vanish before the holy beams” in a bright A major, it incorporates chromatic obscurities for “the gloomy shades of ancient night,” a change of tempo and a return to C minor for “hell’s spirits black in throngs” and a wonderfully fresh chorus (in A major again) for “a new created world.” Some of Haydn’s happiest inspirations in this work are in such combinations of solo aria and chorus. There is another example, after Raphael’s vivid recitative “And God made the firmament”, in “The marvellous work.” The next two arias - perhaps the two most famous in The Creation - the soloists have to themselves. Raphael’s “Rolling in foaming billows” begins in D minor and makes a most effective change to the major for “softly purling.” Gabriel’s beautifully decorative pastoral aria, “With verdure clad,” is the first movement set in B flat major, which is not insignificant.

After the D major chorus “Awake the harp” and Uriel’s graphically illustrated recitative “In splendour bright” in the same key, the first part of the oratorio ends splendidly and unmistakably in C major with the most celebrated of all Haydn’s choral pieces, “The Heavens are telling.”

Part Two

The second part, however, although it opens with three chords of C major, ends in B flat major, which key is gradually established as the new tonic and is confirmed in its authority in Part Three.

The F minor soprano aria “On mighty pens” - with its clarinet lark, its bassoon doves, its flute nightingale - is part of the transition between the C and B flat areas. So too is Raphael’s D minor recitative, imaginatively scored for lower strings, “And God created great whales,” which also relates to the other important key area of the work - the radiant sharp-key pieces in D, and E major. The soloists’ delightful A major trio, “Most beautiful appear,” with its echoes of Papageno and its anticipation of Schubert’s “Trout,” is one of these. The brilliant combination of soloists and chorus, “The Lord is great,” is another.

The bass recitative, “Straight opening,” summarises the progression, from B flat to D major, with a remarkable series of key changes, one for each of the little character studies introducing the various animals of creation. Haydn seems to have taken particular pleasure in writing illustrative pieces for the bass soloist. After that recitative, he gives Raphael the D major aria “Now Heaven in fullest glory shines,” which contains the most sensational single note in the work - scored for double bassoon and trombones among others - where “heavy beasts” tread the ground. The tenor aria, “In native worth,” reverts to C major, which key is finally disposed of by the B flat major of “Achieved is the glorious work.” That chorus is definitively repeated, with its “Hallelujah” extensions at the end of the second part, after the most inspired of the solo pieces: “On thee each living soul awaits” is an E flat major soprano-tenor duet with wind accompaniment in the outer sections and a dramatically harmonised bass solo in in the middle.

Part Three

So Haydn has already bridged the potentially dangerous gap between the story of the creation in the first two parts and the account of Adam and Eve in Paradise in the third part. At the same time he had avoided C major predictability. With the emergence of man tonality has progressed to B flat major. But Haydn is careful to provide other links with the beginning of the work. Part Three opens in E major with a beautiful trio for flutes, which is a superbly ordered counterpart to the opening “Representation of Chaos.” While the extended Adam and Eve duet, “By thee with bliss,” is in C major, the recitative “Our duty we have how performed” confirms the seniority of B flat major by recalling (in the accompaniment) “Achieved is the glorious work” from the end of Part Two.

After another Paradise duet, “Graceful consort,” in E flat major, with its enchanting Allegro second section for “The dew-dropping morn,” no one is in a mood to take much notice of Uriel’s quiet words of warning. So the work ends joyously in B flat major with the splendidly Handelian chorus “Sing the Lord, ye voices all.”

Rupert Avis©