Part 9 (2/2)

Before proceeding further we may deal finally with the libretto of ”The Creation” The ”unintelligible jargon” which disfigures Haydn's immortal work has often for that can be said of it can well be too severe ”The Creation” libretto stands to the present day as an exaruous in words for music The theme has in itself so many elements of inspiration that it is a lish-speaking audiences have listened to the arrant nonsense hich Haydn's music is associated As has been well observed, ”the suburban love-thy references to the habits of the worm and the leviathan are almost o a leading h value, , in ”The Creation” toa fresh libretto; for, said he, ”the present one seems only fit for the nursery, to use in connection with Noah's ark” At the Norwich Festival performance of the oratorio in 1872, the words were, in fact, altered, but in all the published editions of the work the text remains as it was It is usual to credit the coible jargon” The baron certainly had a considerable hand in the adaptation of the text But in reality it owes its very uncouth verbiage largely to the circulish into Gerlish; the words, with the exception of the first chorus, being adapted to thethe ways of translators, the best libretto in the world could not but have suffered under such transfor a real injustice to the ood friend of more than one composer, to hold hie Thomson's letters to Mrs Hunter we read: ”It it is not the first time that your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful canzonets Would he had been directed by you about the words to 'The Creation'! It is lamentable to see such divine lish He (Haydn) wrote me lately that in three years, by the performance of 'The Creation' and 'The Seasons' at Vienna, 40,000 florins had been raised for the poor families of musicians”]

The Stimulus of London

Haydn set to work on ”The Creation” with all the ardour of a first love

Nauh spirits were due to the ”enthusiastic plaudits of the English people,” and that the birth of both ”The Creation” and ”The Seasons” was ”unquestionably owing to the new land” There was now, in short, burning within his breast, ”a spirit of conscious strength which he knew not he possessed, or knowing, was unaware of its true worth”

This is soerated Handel wrote ”The Messiah” in twenty-four days; it took Haydn the best part of eighteen months to complete ”The Creation,” from which we may infer that ”the sad laws of time” had not stopped their operation simply because he had been to London No doubt, as we have already more than hinted, he was roused and stimulated by the new scenes and the unfaland His temporary release fro influence Sofroood lady, hoeet is soed at tihed for freedom, and now I have it in sohno longer a bond-servant sweetens all my toils” If this liberty, this contact with new people and new forms of existence, had coht have altered the whole current of his career But it did not help him much in the actual composition of ”The Creation,” which he found rather a tax, alike on his inspiration and his physical powers Writing to Breitkopf & Hartel on June 12, 1799, he says: ”The world daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one could believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce these, inas state of my nerves so completely crush me to the earth, that I fall into the most melancholy condition, soone single idea, till at length my heart is revived by Providence, when I seat in once ain, God be praised!”

Self-Criticism

In the same letter he remarks that, ”as for myself, now an old man, I hope the critics reat severity, and be too hard on it They raphy faulty in various passages, and perhaps other things also which I have for so many years been accustoenuine connoisseur will see the real cause as readily as I do, and illingly cast aside such stunificance of all this

[At this point in the original book, a facsi ”The Creation” takes up the entire next page]

Certainly it ought to be taken into account in any critical estimate of ”The Creation”; for when a racious, to say the least, for an outsider to insist upon them It is obvious at any rate that Haydn undertook the coht-hearted spirit ”Never was I so pious,” he says, ”as when coious feeling that before I sat down to the pianoforte I prayed to God with earnestness that He would enable reat composers there is only one parallel to this fraious fervour in which Handel composed ”The Messiah”

First Performance of the Oratorio

The first performance of ”The Creation” was of a purely private nature

It took place at the Schwartzenburg Palace, Vienna, on the 29th of April 1798, the perfor over the orchestra Van Swieten had been exerting hiuarantee fund for the co to 350 pounds, were paid over to hiress of the work ”One moment,” he says, ”I was as cold as ice, the next I seeht I should have a fit” A year later, on the 19th of March 1799, to give the exact date, the oratorio was first heard publicly at the National Theatre in Vienna, when it produced the greatest effect The play-bill announcing the perfore) had a very ornamental border, and was, of course, in Gerinal book, a facsimile of the first play-bill for ”The Creation” takes up the entire next page]

Next year the score was published by Breitkopf & Hartel, and no fewer than 510 copies, nearly half the nue was printed both in Ger as follows: ”The Creation: an Oratorio composed by Joseph Haydn, Doctor of Musik, and member of the Royal Society of Musik, in Sweden, in actuel (sic) service of His Highness the Prince of Esterhazy, Vienna, 1800” Clementi had just set up a ust 22, 1800, we find Haydn writing to his publishers to coulden by Clenment of copies

London Perforh, had threatened Haydn with penalties for pirating his text, but he thought better of the matter, and norote to the coht produce the oratorio in London He was, however, forestalled by Ashley, as at that ti perforht forward the neork on the 28th of March (1800) An a anecdote is told in this connection The score arrived by a King's er from Vienna on Saturday, March 22, at nine o'clock in the evening It was handed to Thomas Goodwin, the copyist of the theatre, who immediately had the parts copied out for 120 perfor, and when Mr Harris, the proprietor of the theatre, complimented all parties concerned on their expedition, Goodith ready wit, replied: ”Sir, we have hureat example; it is not the first time that the Creation has been completed in six days” Salomon followed on the 21st of April with a perfor the principal parts Mara remarked that it was the first time she had accoe to say--for oratorio has never been much at home in France--”The Creation” was received with immense enthusiasm in Paris when it was first performed there in the sureat that the artists, in a fit of transport, and to show their personal regard for the coold raver, Gateaux It was adorned on one side with a likeness of Haydn, and on the other side with an ancient lyre, over which a flame flickered in the e a Haydn par les Musiciens qui ont execute l'oratorio de la Creation du Monde au Theatre des Arts l'au ix de la Republique Francais ou MDCCC” The istic address, to which the recipient duly replied in a rather flowery epistle ”I have often,” he wrote, ”doubted whether oodness inspires me with confidence, and the token of esteem hich you have honoured me perhaps justifies entleray hairs, and strewn flowers on the brink of rave”

Seven years after this Haydn received another medal from Paris--from the Societe Academique des Enfants d'Apollon, who had elected him an honorary member

A second performance of ”The Creation” took place in the French capital on December 24, 1800, when Napoleon I escaped the infernal land, the home of oratorio, that the work naturally took firmest root It was performed at the Worcester Festival of 1800, at the Hereford Festival of the following year, and at Gloucester in 1802 Within a few years it had taken its place by the side of Handel's best works of the kind, and its popularity remained untouched until Mendelssohn's ”Elijah” was heard at Birh it has lost soue, it is still to be found in the repertory of our leading choral societies It is said that when a friend urged Haydn to hurry the completion of the oratorio, he replied: ”I spendtihted he would have been could he have foreseen that it would still be sung and listened to with pleasure in the early years of the twentieth century

”The Creation” criticized

No one thinks of dealing critically with the music of ”The Messiah”; and it seems almost as thankless a task to take the music of ”The Creation”

to pieces Schiller called it a ”h he was not quite innocent of the sah over its imitations of beasts and birds

Critics of the oratorio seldom fail to point out these ”natural history effects”--to rea of the leviathan,” the orchestral i of the ”heavy beasts,” and such like It is probably indefensible on purely artistic grounds But Handel did it in ”Israel in Egypt” and elsewhere And is there not a crowing cock in Bach's ”St Matthew Passion”? Haydn only followed the example of his predecessors

Of course, the dispassionate critic cannot help observing that there is in ”The Creation” a good deal ofwhich is trumpery But there is also much that is first-rate The instrumental representation of chaos, for exae of oratorio produces a finer effect than the soft voices at the words, ”And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” Even the fortissi abruptly after the piano andto-day as it hen first sung It has been said that the work is singularly deficient in sustained choruses That is true, if we are co it with the choruses of Handel's oratorios But Haydn's style is entirely different froned on ascale They are more reflective or descriptive, much less dramatic It was not in his way ”to strike like a thunderbolt,” as Mozart said of Handel The descriptive effects which he desired to introduce into his orchestration made it necessary that he should throw the vocal element into a simpler mould Allowance must be made for these differences Haydn could never have written ”The Messiah,” but, on the other hand, Handel could never have written ”The Creation”