Haydn’s Late Oratorios: The Creation and The Seasons

The Genesis of The Creation

 

In the middle of August 1795 Joseph Haydn left England for the last time. His two visits (from January 1791 to July 1792 and February 1794 until August 1795) had occupied most of the previous four years. For the 63-year old composer, his entire life up to the point he first came to London spent in the sometimes claustrophobic ambiance of a princely court, it had been a period of unparalleled success, one Haydn himself looked back on as the happiest period of his life.[i] Entertained by royalty, feted by the nobility, and adored by the press and London’s avid concert-going public, Haydn had achieved the kind of popular acclaim the English had previously reserved for only one foreign musical visitor – Handel.

 

Along with huge financial rewards amounting to a net gain from his two trips of some £1900,[ii] Haydn returned to Vienna laden with music, gifts (including a talking parrot) and a manuscript libretto of an oratorio on the subject of the creation of the world given to him by Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario and musician who had been responsible for bringing Haydn to England. There seems little doubt that Salomon hoped that the libretto might lure the lucrative Haydn back to London one final time. Although things failed to work out that way, it was in many ways a clever move. The impresario was well aware that English devotion to the oratorios of Handel remained little dimmed nearly forty years after his death, even to the point of producing new pastiches extracted from previous works.

 

In 1784 the cult for Handel’s oratorios and other choral works had received fresh impetus from a large-scale commemoration at Westminster Abbey mounted to honour the centenary of his birth. (The organisers had, of course, been a year out; Handel was born in 1685.) The 1784 commemoration, which started the fashion for large performing forces in Handel’s choral works, is well known in the annals of music history, having been recorded by a number of observers, including the historian Charles Burney. Less familiar are the subsequent festivals, held annually in the wake of the great success of the initial event until 1787 and revived in 1791, by which time the forces employed had grown ever more gargantuan. According to the English dilettante composer John Marsh, the number of performers had now reached “nearly double” the 500 who appeared at the original commemoration, although Marsh felt their numbers merely “crowded and encumbered the orchestra without improving the effect”. [iii] But one visitor, as yet unfamiliar with the grandeur of the English choral tradition, was overwhelmed by the experience of hearing Messiah given in this manner. If we are to believe Giuseppe Carpani, one of Haydn’s earliest, if not totally reliable, biographers, Haydn “was struck as if he had been put back to the beginning of his studies… He meditated on every note and drew from these most learned scores the essence of true musical grandeur”.[iv] It is often suggested that Haydn’s desire to write a new oratorio dates from that June day in 1791; indeed according to an account published very much later, Haydn told the violinist and composer Barthélemon that in the wake of the Messiah performance he wished to compose a similar work that would give him lasting fame.

 

Neither the composition of oratorios, nor an awareness of Handel’s music was new to Haydn. An earlier oratorio, Il ritorna di Tobia (The return of Tobias), written for the Vienna Tonkünstler-Sozietät dates back as far as 1775 and was extensively revised for a further performance in 1784. Yet despite its rich orchestral effects and contrapuntal choruses that were compared in the press to those of Handel, Tobia was an old-fashioned work in the Italian oratorio tradition, with florid arias, and a static, Metastasian libretto in which “moralizing reflections and philosophical ruminations replace any actions”.[v] We do not know exactly when Haydn first became acquainted with Handel’s oratorios, but it seems probable that it was through the auspices of the same man who inspired Mozart’s particular interest in them. Baron Gottfried van Swieten was a diplomat and court administrator who had a passion for old music in general, and that of Bach and Handel in particular. His Sunday midday concerts were regularly attended by Mozart after the latter settled in Vienna, and it seems inconceivable that Haydn too would not have attended when he was in Vienna, given that Haydn had known van Swieten, a subscriber to his publications, since at least the early 1770s. If van Swieten’s relations with Haydn are somewhat shadowy before the London visits, they were about to take on a very much higher profile as the German librettist of both The Creation and The Seasons.

 

Who Wrote the Libretto of The Creation?

 

The authorship of the manuscript libretto of The Creation pressed on Haydn by Salomon as the composer left England has been the cause of much musicological and literary discussion, which can here receive only a summary of its principal strands. One of the most important pieces of evidence comes from van Swieten, who stated in a letter that the original un-attributed English libretto had been intended for Handel and had been drawn largely from Milton’s Paradise Lost. [vi] This runs counter to Haydn’s early biographer G. A. Griesinger, who claims that the author was an Englishman by the name of Lidley, taken by modern scholars to be a corruption of the name of Thomas Linley the elder (1733-95), the English composer and entrepreneur. Linley, not known for his literary prowess, seems a most unlikely candidate, although there is a theory that he may have come by the libretto as a result of his co-directorship of the Drury Lane oratorios.[vii] However, most scholars have tended to follow the Handel trail, with such familiar names as those of Charles Jennens (the librettist of Messiah), and Newburgh Hamilton (librettist of Samson) being favourites. Also in the frame on the evidence of a letter she wrote claiming to have written an oratorio book for Handel is Mary Delany, an old friend of his. More recently, Neil Jenkins, who has prepared new English texts for both of Haydn’s late oratorios, has undertaken a detailed comparison of the librettos Jennens and Hamilton wrote for Handel with the libretto passed to Haydn. As a result of his research, Jenkins has now advanced a persuasive argument in favour of Jennens being the source of the libretto that in the hands of Haydn and van Swieten would become Die Schöpfung.[viii]

 

The Creation: Composition and Reception

 

This, then, was the libretto that found its way to Vienna among Haydn’s effects. According to the van Swieten letter already mentioned, Haydn had refused to be pressed into making a decision about setting it before he left for London, a natural reaction given that his English was still not sufficiently good to come to any hasty conclusions. His first positive reactions after examining the book were supported by van Swieten, who, to quote his own words, “recognised at once that such an exalted subject would give Haydn the opportunity I had long desired, to express the full power of his inexhaustible genius”. Van Swieten took it upon himself to translate the text into German, at the same time abridging the lengthy text to more manageable proportions. Haydn had obviously started some work before the end of 1796, as a letter from Albrechtsberger to Beethoven makes clear. Haydn had called on him, mentioning that he was carrying around in his head ideas for a big oratorio to be called The Creation (the first mention we have of the title). “He improvised some of it for me”, wrote Albrechtsberger, “and I think it will be very good”.[ix]

 

Haydn worked on The Creation intermittently during 1797, a year during which he was also involved with one of his finest sets of string quartets, the six published in 1799 as opus 76. As an intensely religious man, it seems that Haydn took special care with the work, which he viewed as a thanks offering to God for all the miracles of His creation. Van Swieten seems to have freely dispensed not only literary, but also musical advice, some of which Haydn was happy to accept. According to Griesinger, Haydn stated that he was “never so devout” as at the time he was working on The Creation. “Every day I fell to my knees and asked God to give me strength to enable me to pursue the work to a successful conclusion”.[x] We don’t know exactly when the score was completed, but Haydn doubtless worked on it after he returned in the autumn to Eisenstadt, where he was still Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus II, albeit with much reduced duties.

 

The first performance of The Creation took place at the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg on 29 April 1798, a semi-private event for which invitations were much sought after by the Viennese beau monde. The premiere had created huge interest in Vienna, which was attended not only by the fashionable audience, but also by a large crowd of onlookers that caused such chaos that all the efforts of eighteen mounted and twelve foot police were needed to maintain control. The furore over The Creation proved to be justified, the performance of the oratorio, conducted by the composer, being a huge success with both press and public. “Already three days have passed since that happy evening”, wrote one ecstatic critic, “and it still sounds in my ears, in my heart, and my breast is constricted by many emotions even thinking about it”.[xi] On the following day, 30 April, 7 May and 10 May further performances took place at the Schwarzenberg Palace, by the end of which it appears that Haydn was not surprisingly suffering from overwork and was ordered to take rest.

 

Some eleven months later, on 19 March 1799, The Creation received its first public performance in the Burgtheater in Vienna, an occasion that has gone down as one of the most renowned in the glittering musical history of the Austrian capital. It was recorded that although the concert was not scheduled to begin until 7:00, by 4:00 the throng was so great that there were a number of incidents as the audience battled for seats. The performance was given by forces that were variously numbered as being between either 180 or 400 strong, a large discrepancy possibly accounted for by the ambivalence that attended the word “orchestra”, which may or may not include the chorus. The soloists were the soprano Therese Saal, a 17 year-old making her debut, tenor Mathias Rathmeyer and Therese’s father, the bass Ignaz Saal. Rathmeyer and Ignaz Saal had sung their parts in the Schwarzenberg Palace performances the previous year. Since the nobility underwrote the entire cost, Haydn made a substantial profit from takings that set a new record for the Burgtheater. One of the most remarkable features of the many reports that have survived is the total silence that seems to have been maintained during the music, by no means a common occurrence, although it was greeted with thunderous applause between numbers. The success was total, perhaps the greatest single triumph of Haydn’s life. It started a vogue for performances in Vienna, the most famous of which was perhaps that given in March 1808, when the ailing composer, now just a few days short of his 76th birthday, was carried onto the platform in an armchair amidst a fanfare of trumpets and drums.

 

The publication of the score at the end of February 1800, uniquely with texts in both German and English, led naturally to wider dissemination of The Creation, the first performance in London taking place on 28 March 1800, quickly followed by one under Salomon on 21 April. Both used an English text that has been assumed to be based on the now-lost original given to Haydn, rather than that printed in the score. Curiously, although the oratorio was well enough received, reaction fell considerably short of the near-ecstatic reception it had received in Vienna (and subsequently other German-speaking centres). Initial criticism in England was based largely on Haydn’s perceived inability to “breath […] the sacred inspiration of Handel”, to quote one review, but it was not long before the literary quality of van Swieten’s libretto and the overtly mimetic effects began to inspire derision, not only in England, but elsewhere.

 

The Creation: Text and Music

 

As we have seen, the libretto of The Creation is based in part on the first book of Genesis, but largely on John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In particular it focuses on Book 7, which deals with God’s creation of the world and His filling it with living creatures, as related by the archangel Raphael to Adam. Paradoxically however the libretto runs counter to Milton’s argument, laid out at the start of Book 1: “The first book proposes […] the whole subject, man’s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent”. Yet reading through the libretto of The Creation reveals no mention of either serpent or Satan and the work ends not, as does Paradise Lost, with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, but with the couple in a blissful state clouded only by the warning given by the archangel Uriel: “O happy pair, and always happy yet, if not, misled by false conceit, ye strive at more than granted is, and more to know than know ye should”. These words are of interest not only for providing the only hint in The Creation of the coming Fall, but also, more widely, perhaps a note of caution directed at the scientific and philosophical debates that for over a century had undermined the very concept of creationism. But fundamentally The Creation is a work of its time, a work imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, rather than Milton’s dark, Puritan world, a feature that may at least in part account for English reservations about the oratorio. Indeed those words of Uriel quoted above might well have come from Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. God is here the giver of all that is good and beautiful in the world, manifest in visual results that can be seen daily all around us and are worthy not only of belief in, but also praise of God. There can be little doubt that it was this that gave inspiration to Haydn, not only a profound believer, but also a countryman well acquainted with both the beauty and the savagery of the natural world.

 

The Creation is divided into three parts, the first alternating between a colourful account of the creation of the earth and seas, and praise of God for his miraculous work. In Part 2 we meet the animals and birds that will populate the newly created world, culminating in the most miraculous of all God’s creations - man himself. Part 3 is devoted to man in the shape of Adam and Eve. In keeping with the necessity for varied vocal registers, the narrative in Parts 1 and 2 is carried forward not solely by Raphael, as in Paradise Lost, but by three archangels, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel, whose recitatives frequently open with the words “And God said”, thus following both Genesis and Paradise Lost. Arias and solo ensembles are also sung by the archangels, while it falls largely to the chorus to interject its wonder at God’s achievements and conclude each of these opening parts with magnificent paeans, “Die Himmel erzählen” (“The heavens are telling”) (Part 1) and “Vollender ist das grosse Werk (“Achieved is the glorious work”) (Part 2). Part 3 takes a different form. After Uriel invites us to observe newly created man within his milieu, the parts formerly taken by Raphael (bass) and Gabriel (soprano) are allotted to Adam and Eve, the two archangels playing no further part in the oratorio. The introduction of fresh soloists adopted by some performances and recordings at this point therefore has no justification and there is no evidence that Haydn ever did so.

 

The musical glory of The Creation lies in three principal components: the overpowering majesty of the choruses that owe such an obvious debt to the example of Handel’s English oratorios; the unerring skill with which Haydn paints his descriptive canvasses; and the absolute mastery of orchestration that the composer had finally achieved in the “London” symphonies and late Masses, here employed to perhaps even more telling effect, especially in some of the glorious writing for the winds. Indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to claim that the orchestra in The Creation is every bit as much a protagonist as the soloists and chorus. This supreme craftsmanship is immediately apparent in the overture, a representation of the chaos that existed before God’s creation of the world. As has been often noted, the concept has a precedent in Le Chaos, the movement with which Jean-Féry Rebel opened his symphonie de danse Les Elémens over fifty years earlier. Yet Haydn’s depiction is infinitely subtler, finding no necessity to employ extreme dissonance, but rather evoking a void in which matter erupts and disperses in extreme dynamic contrasts and fragmentary chromatic scales and arpeggiations. This extraordinary opening segues effortlessly into Raphael’s accompanied recitative depicting the darkness of the world, a passage of mysterious, unfathomable depth. The stage is now set for the most astonishing coup de théâtre in the work, God’s command that his new world will receive light. Prefaced by the chorus’ pp and sotto voce, the great moment arrives on the word “Licht” with overwhelming force and a dramatic impact that stunned early audiences, frequently bringing them to their feet.

 

Other instances of orchestral wizardry abound. Gabriel’s enchanting first aria in Part 2, “Auf starken Fittichen” (“On mighty pens”) is a master-class in descriptive writing drawn in fresh, delicate hues, the bewitching description of the birds that now populate the earth employing ornamental figuration for clarinet and flute of the greatest finesse. The introduction to Uriel’s Part 1 accompanied recitative “In vollen glanze” (“In splendour bright”) is a wonderful evocation of sunrise in which Haydn excels his own outstanding exemplar composed over thirty years earlier as the opening movement of his Symphony No. 6 (Le Matin). Later in the same recitative, the “the softer beams and milder light” of the moon are illustrated in a magical Adagio passage underpinned by sustained string part writing and suspensions. The key instruction of God to the birds and beasts to “go forth and multiply” (in the Part 2 accompanied recitative “Und Gott schuf”) inspire another unforgettable moment, the solemn command given immense dignity by divisi basses creating a richly-textured underlay. Finally (and space precludes mention of many further examples), we might draw attention to the orchestral introduction to Part 3, an ineffably lovely picture of man’s idyllic innocence before the Fall and a movement in which the interplay of three flutes projects a mood of utmost serenity.

 

As the foregoing suggests most of the descriptive events are conveyed by recitative, generally accompanied. These recitatives constitute one of the major elements of the work and include the mimetic passages that concerned the composer himself and induced later accusations of naivety. Today such concerns will be largely irrelevant to an appreciation of The Creation by anyone capable of approaching its majestic breadth and scope with due recognition of its greatness. While we might smile at Haydn’s imagery, at the tremulous roaring of lions, the leap of the tiger, the heavy stomp of cattle, or the sinuous, slow progress of the worm, the imaginative will surely smile with him, not at him, rejoicing in the temporary recovery of a lost world of innocence.

 

There are relatively few arias, a total of only six throughout the oratorio, of which the two finest are both allotted to Gabriel. Mention has already been made of “Auf starken Fittichen” in Part 2, which has its counterpart in Part 1 in the shape of “Nun beut die Fleur” (“With verdure clad”). The elegant, gracefully shaped melody has all the verdant freshness of the trees and flowers it describes, while the easy paced tempo and siciliana rhythm are typical of similar pastorales from the baroque onwards.

 

At the heart of Part 3 are two large-scale duets for Adam and Eve. In the first, “Von deiner Güt” (“By thee with bliss”), the couple give praise to God for the wonders he has wrought. At no fewer than 387 bars, it is the most expansive movement in the work and is divided into two sections, the first a prayerful Adagio introduced by a ravishing phrase for solo oboe in which the chorus steals in to add reverential support, the second a jaunty Allegretto recapitulating the joys of God’s creation in the couple’s own words. The second is more personal, an expression of the couple’s love for each other. Little shorter than the first duet, it is also divided into two parts. The first is again marked adagio, an infinitely tender introduction that leads to a lively allegro in popular contradanse style that disconcerted some of Haydn’s contemporaries, particularly after he humorously referred to it in the “Qui tollis” section of the “Creation” Mass three years later. Mention has already been made of the resplendent choruses that conclude Parts 1 and 2, and the work is rounded off by the grandest of them all, “Singet dem Herren”, which like its fellows opens with a homophonic section that is succeeded by a magnificent fugal movement broadening out to an overwhelming peroration and final “Amen”.