CONCERT NOTES

The Creation is the culmination of Joseph Haydn’s long and productive career. Alternately profound and playful, it blends elements of Handel’s baroque oratorios with the newer, classical style to which Haydn had contributed so generously.

Unlike his younger contemporaries–Mozart and Beethoven–Haydn was not born into a family of professional musicians. His father was a village wheelwright who encouraged his son’s musical aptitude and sent him, at the age of 6, to live with a relative in a nearby town where he could receive a higher level of musical instruction. Two years later, Haydn was admitted to the choir school attached to St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, where he studied singing, violin, and keyboard along with Latin and other general subjects. When his voice changed, Haydn had to choose between returning to his native village or trying to eke out a living in Vienna while somehow acquiring the skills of a successful composer. He decided to stay in Vienna, playing all the gigs he could get and serving as the valet of an Italian opera composer who taught him the basics of musical composition. After seven years of living hand-to-mouth, Haydn was employed by a series of noblemen until he became the music director for Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, an immensely wealthy Hungarian aristocrat whose servants formed a resident chamber orchestra and staged operas.

Haydn spent almost thirty years on the Esterhazy estates, writing more than 90 symphonies, 14 operas, and scores of chamber works for Prince Nicholas. In 1779, the Prince allowed Haydn to publish his compositions and over the next decade his music became known and admired throughout Europe.

In 1791, Haydn attended the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey, a series of concerts including Messiah, Israel in Egypt, excerpts from other oratorios, and shorter works with an orchestra and chorus of more than a thousand performers. The sound produced by that mighty array, the majesty of the Abbey–Handel’s burial place–and the sight of the king and queen standing with their subjects for the Hallelujah Chorus stirred Haydn to his depths. During his second English visit, 1794-5, he obtained a libretto based on the biblical account of the creation which, he was told, had been offered to Handel. After the score was complete, van Swieten edited the English text to conform to Haydn’s music. The first performance, on 30 April 1798, was by invitation only at the Schwarzenberg Palace. It was a triumph. The success of the first public performance–at Vienna’s renowned Burgtheater–was even more spectacular. Haydn was called to the stage repeatedly, and cheered as he had never been before. The Creation enjoyed continuing popularity in Vienna. It was performed there nearly 40 times between 1799 and Haydn’s death in 1809. Haydn’s last public appearance was in 1808 when, old and unwell, he was carried into a performance of The Creation on a sedan chair. One listener noticed that at the fortissimo chord accompanying the word “LIGHT” Haydn was seen pointing upward, saying “Not from me. It came from there.”