The Genesis of The Creation

We invited Denis McCaldin, Director of the Haydn Society of Great Britain, to share with us the story behind the composition of The Creation ahead of our concert on 13 June 2026.

When Haydn was leaving London in 1795 at the end of his second highly successful visit to the city, his friend the impresario J.P. Salomon gave him a libretto which was originally intended for Handel. It was for an oratorio entitled The Creation and was based on three sources: the Creation story in Genesis, Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Psalms. Many suggestions have been made regarding the unknown author of the text and new research from Neil Jenkins, the English singer, suggests that it may be the work of Charles Jennens, who wrote the libretto for Messiah.

Haydn always envisaged The Creation as a bilingual work, and asked his friend and patron, the Austrian diplomat Baron Gottfried van Swieten, to produce a German libretto, as well as revising the English text to make it fit Haydn’s musical setting. Because van Swieten was neither a native speaker nor a man of much humility, his English version, which Sheffield Chamber Orchestra will be performing in June, has a number of clumsy moments.

The Creation was first performed in Vienna on 30 April 1798. It stands as one of the great works of the oratorio repertoire, alongside Handel’s Messiah and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. It is Haydn at his greatest, combining his rich experience as a symphonist and opera composer with his admiration for the English choral tradition. This he experienced at first hand during his two triumphant visits to London in the 1790s.

From the outset it is clear that the subject brought out the very best in this deeply religious man. Beginning with ‘The Representation of Chaos’, where the composer upsets musical convention with jagged, discontinuous scoring, and shifting, inconclusive harmonies before proceeding almost immediately to the divine simplicity of C major for the words ‘Let there be light’, the high quality of Haydn’s invention is immediately apparent.

As well as the wonderfully apt orchestral recitatives describing each step in the creation of the natural world, the soloists’ arias are equally effective - from the tenor’s heroics for ‘In native worth’ to the limpid charm of the soprano cavatina ‘In verdure clad’. But Haydn kept his best music for the chorus.

After hearing a vast performance of Messiah at Westminster Abbey in 1791, he determined to follow in Handel’s footsteps by treating the choir as an equal partner with the soloists and the orchestra. ‘Awake the Harp', 'The Heavens are Telling’ and ‘Achieved is the Glorious Work’ are just three of the high points in this fine oratorio celebrating nature, innocence, and humanity.

Denis McCaldin

Denis McCaldin is a conductor and musicologist. He is Director of the Haydn Society of Great Britain and Professor Emeritus of Performance Studies in Music at Lancaster University. He has conducted many major British orchestras, specialising in choral and chamber orchestral music. He has also edited a number of Haydn's works and one of his CDs (featuring his edition of the Little Organ Mass) has received a Gramophone Critic's Choice award.

The Haydn Society of Great Britain exists to promote a wider knowledge and understanding of the music of Joseph Haydn and contemporaries. Further details are available on the society's website.