Haydn’s awesome Creation
The biblical story of the creation has inspired ordinary people, great composers and artists, philosophers, theologians, and scientists—countless people through the centuries. Among these are the matchless Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809).
One of the greatest choral works ever written is his Creation, a dramatic musical retelling of the biblical story in Genesis and also John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. Completed in 1798, the story is told by three angels: Raphael (bass), Uriel (tenor), and Gabriel (soprano); and the chorus.
I included below the first three movements of Creation. They reflect Haydn’s amazing skill as a composer, his reverence for the biblical story, and his sense of humor.
Track 4: Overture and representation of chaos. As a Christian in the 18th century, Haydn perceived in creation that God brought order out of chaos. Although this music may not sound that chaotic to our 21st-century ears, the endless little ripples and eddies of sound, melodies introduced and then leading nowhere, and unpredictable changes in harmonies and dynamics tell us something about Haydn’s great mind and his understanding of the condition of the universe in the beginning.
Track 5: Raphael tells the beginning of the story (in German; translation is below):
RAPHAEL
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
CHORUS
And the Spirit of God moved
Upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light;
And there was light.
URIEL
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Track 6: Uriel continues the story with some beautiful choral commentary.
URIEL
Now before the sacred ray
The dismal shadows of black darkness vanish;
The first day has begun.
Confusion yields before emergent order.
Benumbed, the host of hellish spirits flees down to the abyss,
To eternal night.
CHORUS
Despair, rage and terror
Accompany their fall.
And a new world arises
At God’s word.
By the way, when I played Raphael’s solo and the chorus that follows for my students, I always enjoyed watching their reactions to the suddenness of the music at “light.”
