Oratorio in three parts 

German libretto by Baron Gottfried von Swieten
First performance: Vienna, April 30, 1798

Soloists: Soprano, tenor, bass
Chorus: S-A-T-B
Orchestra: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings, keyboard continuo

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

From its very first performance in Vienna in April of 1798, The Creation caused an unprecedented sensation throughout Europe.  It was seen as the crowning achievement of the greatest living composer, and box office receipts for the premiere broke all records.  With tickets hard to come by, market stalls had to be cleared in front of the theater, and foot police were hired to control the crowd.  Following the Paris premiere, Napoleon -- who was nearly assassinated in the plot of Rue Saint-Nicaise on his way to the theater -- had a medal struck in honor of the composer. 

In Vienna, Haydn's oratorio has been performed every year since its premiere and has enjoyed the unique stature that Handel's Messiah has in English-speaking countries.  Elsewhere, however, the work, and particularly its text, gradually began to come in for criticism.  At a time when a great deal of literature was censored in Vienna for its revolutionary tendencies, some saw dangerous Masonic influences in the text, and the church banned performances in its buildings.  Nonetheless, government authorities generally considered the libretto of The Creation to be safe and conservative.  It reads like a Baroque text, influenced in part by Handel's oratorios:  it is based on a biblical model with old-fashioned symbolism and musical depictions of animals and other effects.  While all this worked well with the Viennese, the more up-to-date -- and less censored -- German literati began after a few years to criticize it as backward.  Schiller, whose plays were banned in Vienna, called the libretto a "characterless mishmash" and considered the word painting in the music to be simplistic.

In England, where Haydn's recent visits were still remembered with admiration, the music was an enormous success, even after the libretto eventually began to be criticized.  But here there was another element at work.  As popular as Haydn was, there were increasingly strong suggestions that it was presumptuous to try to compete with the enshrined oratorios of their "native" son Handel.  A newspaper review of the London premiere began the attack gently:  "[The Creation], although not equal in grandeur to the divine compositions of the immortal HANDEL, is nevertheless, on the whole, a very charming production."

By the end of the nineteenth century, The Creation was in low repute and rarely heard outside Vienna, except for some of its solo arias, which were used as recital pieces.  The libretto, according to one biographer of the time, was in places "more than modern flesh and blood can bear . . . In another fifty years, perhaps, the critic will be able to say that [the work's] main interest is largely historic and literary."

Nearly fifty years later, however, almost the opposite happened.  In 1949, the short-lived Haydn Society, a company created by the scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, issued the first recording of The Creation, touching off its rapid revival as one of the greatest and most popular works of the choral repertoire.  Today even the librettist of this great work is generally admired as a fine collaborator who inspired Haydn's genius.

The libretto

The text for The Creation is by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the musical connoisseur who introduced Mozart and Haydn to many of the works of Bach and Handel.  It was he who commissioned Mozart's arrangements of Handel's Messiah and Acis and Galatea and who commissioned symphonies from C. P. E. Bach.  And it was he who encouraged Haydn to write an up-to-date Handelian oratorio, a suggestion which Haydn no doubt found intriguing, since he had only recently visited England, where he was greatly moved by performances of Handel's music.

The work is in three parts, Part I dealing with the creation of the earth and its flora, Part II with the creation of the animal world and of man, and Part III with the awakening of Adam and Eve.  Three soloists -- the number always used by Haydn himself for this piece -- portray three archangels and later Adam and Eve.  Van Swieten's German text actually derives mainly from English sources, principally paraphrases of the English bible and Milton's Paradise Lost.  An actual English translation, using some of the original words from these sources, appears in the first published edition of The Creation (1800), which gives singing texts in both German and English.  Exactly who created the English translation has never been completely established, although some suspect Van Swieten himself, perhaps even with the collaboration of Haydn. 

German or English?

Because The Creation appeared in both German and English during Haydn's lifetime, it is often sung in the vernacular in English-speaking countries.  However, German is the language for which the music was originally composed and which fits the notes more convincingly.  While the English can make the text feel more immediate to English speakers, the language is often awkward and stilted in places where it is not borrowing directly from Milton or the bible.  This was  already recognized and criticized by British listeners and critics during Haydn's lifetime.  One publisher wrote, "It is lamentable to see such divine music joined with such miserable broken English . . ."  Today, with audiences so used to hearing works of Bach, Mozart and others in their original languages, it would seem preferable to present this oratorio in the stronger character of its original German and to provide an audience with a translation.

The music

The oratorio opens with an extraordinary orchestral introduction, depicting the chaos which preceded creation.  It is without doubt the most modern music written up to that time.  Not only do the chromatic harmonies depict the instability of chaos, but the large orchestra is used in novel ways that truly belong to the nineteenth century.  The transparent colors of solo woodwinds and of lower strings create swirling, shadowy effects.  Each element of the orchestration is carefully thought out, without any formulaic doubling of parts. 

The musical depictions of animals, the sunrise and other effects. which were so criticized in the following century, were initially -- and are again today -- enormously effective and popular.  The wonderful moment when light is created out of darkness with a sudden, fully orchestrated C major chord, was particularly electrifying to the original audiences.  An eyewitness at the first public rehearsal records the effect:

No one, not even Baron van Swieten, had seen the page of the score wherein the birth of light is described.  That was the only passage of the work which Haydn had kept hidden.  I think I see his face even now, as this part sounded in the orchestra.  Haydn had the expression of someone who is thinking of biting his lips, either to hide his embarrassment or to conceal a secret.  And in that moment when light broke out for the first time, one would have said that rays darted from the composer's burning eyes.  The enchantment of the electrified Viennese was so general that the orchestra could not proceed for some minutes.

The use of trombones and contrabassoon is unusual for the time and brilliantly enhances special moments, such as the creation of light and the heavy footsteps of beasts on the earth.  The contrabassoon, which Haydn first heard in London, was in fact new to Vienna.

Performance issues

The size of the forces used for Haydn's own performances of The Creation varied enormously.  There were performances with 200 musicians, one version so small that it would have to be called chamber music, and ensembles of various sizes in between.  When Haydn conducted the work for a visit of Lord Nelson at Esterházy two years after the premiere, he had a relatively small orchestra and chorus. 

Haydn is said by various reports to have taken quick, vigorous tempos in conducting his own works, even in his old age.  In some of the old manuscript parts used by his soloists, there are embellishments added in certain arias, which can inspire ideas about ornamentation today.

Orchestration Chart

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