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.
[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 divides into three parts, the first of which alternates 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”.
A
Man for all Seasons
Sometime before the first public performances of The Creation, Haydn
had embarked on a new oratorio intended to form a kind of sequel. The inspiration appears to have come from van Swieten, whose
text was another with an English language source, but on this occasion one about which there was no mystery. James Thomson’s
epic poem The Seasons was first published in complete form in 1730, after which it rapidly achieved Europe-wide fame,
being translated into German several times and also into French. If van Swieten’s task in preparing the German libretto
of The Creation had been relatively straightforward, The Seasons was a very different matter. Thomson’s
huge poem runs to more than 4300 lines of verse that required careful selection and revision before embarking on translation.
Van Swieten’s solution was to extract certain episodes, concentrating on those in which graphic descriptive detail would
allow Haydn to give full reign to his imagination. In so doing he changed the emphasis of the original, just as that of Milton
had been in The Creation. The dark metaphors of Thomson’s “Winter”, for example, have largely gone,
to be replaced by a text that pays obeisance to more contemporary descriptions of the sublime in nature and the cheerfulness
of the village gathering with its cosy fire.
The success of The Creation ensured that progress
on The Seasons would be followed in the full glare of publicity. Within days of the earlier oratorio’s public
premiere, a report of that event in the respected German musical journal, Allgemeine Musicalische Zeitung concluded
its review by telling its readers that “Haydn is working on a great new work, which […] van Swieten has arranged
metrically from Thomson’s ‘Seasons’, and of which he has already completed the first part, ‘Spring’”.[xii] But work on The Seasons did not come easily to the once fecund Haydn. Three months later we find
him lamenting what he saw as his failing powers in a famous letter, one of a series of observations that illustrate the increasing
weariness the old composer felt:
My business unhappily expands with my advancing years, and
it almost seems as if, with the decrease of my mental powers, my inclination and impulse to work increase. Oh God! How much
yet remains to be done in this splendid art, even by a man like myself! The world, indeed, daily pays me many compliments,
even on the fervour of my latest works; but no one can believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce them, inasmuch
as time after time my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to earth, that I fall into
the most melancholy condition. For days afterwards I am incapable of formulating one single idea, till at length my heart
is revived by Providence, and I seat myself at the piano and begin once more to hammer away at it.[xiii]
One might conjecture that Haydn’s increasing frailty accounted for the well-documented
moments of friction that arose between van Swieten and him during the composition of The Seasons. As with The
Creation, the baron was full of advice to the composer, but on this occasion it sometimes went down less well. Moreover,
Haydn was less than happy with aspects of the libretto, in particular the overtly mimetic sections depicting cocks growing,
frogs croaking and so on, famously described by the composer as “Frenchified trash”. He also complained about
the less than poetic nature of some the text, sardonically remarking of the words “O fleiss, o edler fleiss…”
(Industry, noble industry, from thee comes all prosperity) in the trio and chorus from Autumn, “So lohnet die nature”
(“Thus nature, ever kind”), that he had himself been industrious all his life, but that it had never occurred
to him to set industry to music.
Notwithstanding such problems, The Seasons
was obviously complete by early 1801, as a letter written by Griesinger to the music publisher Breitkopf and Härtel
on 25 March makes clear: “We have just been informed by a friend travelling through Vienna that Haydn has completed
the composition of the 4 Seasons and soon after Easter it will be performed at the Palace of Prince Schwarzenberg.
Expectations could not be higher, but Haydn will surpass them”.[xiv] Expectations were indeed high, but they had to be contained a little longer. Haydn was
again suffering from exhaustion and by the end of March doubts were being expressed in some quarters as to the likelihood
of the new oratorio receiving its premiere that year. But on 24 April 1801, after a delay caused by a death in the Schwarzenberg
family, The Seasons eventually received its first performance under Haydn’s direction, once again a semi-private
performance given by the same soloists who had sung at the first public performance of The Creation (the Saals and
Rathmeyer), an orchestra largely made up of members of the opera orchestra, and a chorus drawn from the choirs of the city’s
churches. The general response was once again one of huge enthusiasm, with praise for the “power of expression with
which the artist [Haydn] very vividly describes nature in all its guises”, an attribute that “surpasses any description”.[xv] Others, however, had reservations, particularly regarding the text, which echo Haydn’s own caveats.
Doubts were expressed about the advisability of attempting to set explicit effects to music: “A composer may describe
natural objects; but how? He should describe them, not as they are – their absolute appearance as physical nature –
but only through the impression they make on us”.[xvi] Here, then, right at the start of the nineteenth century, we find a clear preference for the abstract in music,
a concept running counter to the widely held eighteenth-century view of music as a mimetic art.
One month later The Seasons was given a private performance at court, in which the soprano part was
sung by the Empress Marie Therese under Haydn’s direction (a great admirer of the composer, she also performed in The
Creation the following day, 25 May). The first public performance followed at the Redoutensaal four days later. Compared
with the triumphant entry of The Creation into the world, it was a comparative flop, one eye-eyewitness recording
that it was attended by an audience of little more than 700, barely half the room’s capacity. Despite the disappointing
public premiere, July found Haydn completing an extremely lucrative contract with Breitkopf & Härtel for the publication
of The Seasons. This guaranteed the composer a royalty of 4500 gulden, around four times his annual salary in his
final years of employment as Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II. The score appeared early in 1802,
being published in two editions, one German and French, the other German with a justly excoriated English translation by van
Swieten. Yet astonishingly, The Seasons made little impact in France, which had come to venerate Haydn, and was ignored
in England, the country where he had achieved such a triumphant success only a decade previously. It was, as the great Haydn
scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, has observed, the start of Haydn’s decline and fall to the near oblivion his music would
suffer in the nineteenth century.
The Seasons: Text and Music
As we have already seen, Haydn’s own enthusiasm for the
libretto of The Seasons was by no means unbounded. The topic itself aroused in him less fervour than that of The
Creation. Perhaps the greatest miracle of the oratorio is therefore that it provides virtually no evidence of the increasing
frailty and exhaustion of its composer. Quite the reverse, in fact, in such sections as the exuberant sections of Autumn devoted
to the thrill of the hunt and the drinking song that ends it. In such passages the sheer energy and vitality of the writing
leave the astonished commentator groping for descriptive powers to come anywhere close to an understanding of how this music
could have been written by a man complaining of fading powers.
For obvious
reasons, The Seasons falls into four parts and is logically cast chronologically, starting with Spring. Like The
Creation, it calls for soprano, tenor, and bass soloists, chorus and a large orchestra including four horns
and three trombones. The soloists are themselves country-folk, given respectively the names Hanne, Lukas and Simon, although
they frequently step outside their character to articulate more generalized sentiments or provide narrative description. Whereas
in The Creation the chorus was largely called upon to praise God, here it performs a broader function that in addition
to such passages as the hymn of praise “Sei nun gnädig” in Spring, the magnificent “Freudenlied”
that ends the same part, or the elevated double chorus with which the work ends, calls upon it to play country folk, hunters,
tipplers and, in Winter, a chorus of spinners, a number set to an interpolated Spinning Song for Hanne and the women in which
the whirring of their spinning wheels anticipates Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinrade, even to the point of coming
to a halt, as so poignantly happens in Schubert’s song.
In his necessary
abridgement of Thomson’s poem, van Swieten chose to highlight particular aspects of each season. Spring is the most
nebulous, principally concerned with the rebirth of nature and the resumption of husbandry after the harshness of winter.
Summer is descriptive, taking us through a day from dawn to dusk, a day that includes another of Haydn’s memorable sun
rises, this time for the soloists and chorus; a cavatina for Simon in which his description of the dazzling, debilitating
heat of the midday sun is supported by muted strings and drooping figures for flute and oboe, one of the most beautiful numbers
in the oratorio; a vividly depicted approach and unleashing of a storm, the clearing of the storm, and finally the tolling
of evening bells and call to rest. Autumn concerns itself largely with the countryman’s activities and divides into
several topics: harvest thanksgiving (which includes the big number in praise of industry so scorned by Haydn); a love duet
for Hanne and Lukas; the hunting scene; and a final drinking song concluding with an inebriated choral fugue with off-beat
rhythms. Winter opens with a vivid evocation of bleakness, before turning to introduce a lost wanderer struggling in the snow.
Eventually he finds shelter in the warmth of the village, where the women spin and Hanne entertains by singing a strophic
Lied. A complete change of mood comes with an aria for Simon employing winter as a metaphor for the transitory nature of man’s
life, a strong theme in Thomson’s original poem. At the words “your summer strength is exhausted” Haydn
introduced a quotation from the Andante of his old friend Mozart’s G-minor Symphony, K550, a deeply touching tribute
to the younger man who knew no autumn or winter. Mozart is also recalled in the majestic opening section of the final chorus,
where both text and music of the questions and answers exchanged between the chorus and solo ensemble bring to mind the more
elevated sentiments of Die Zauberflöte, reminding us that both Haydn and van Swieten were also Masons.
Much has been made of the folk-like and Singspiel influences that dominate much of The
Seasons, characteristics that are clear in such movements as the opening chorus “Komm, holder Lenz” (“Come
gentle spring”), with its obvious folk melody and drones. Much of the music for the soloists has obvious roots in Singspiel,
including Simon’s jaunty “Schon eilet” (“Now eagerly the husbandman”) from Spring, and the duet
for Hanne and Lukas from Autumn, where we seem not far from the world of Papageno and Papagena. But closely juxtaposed with
this bucolic world is the underlying theme, the link with The Creation that constantly reminds us that this colourful,
sometimes naïvely unpretentious universe is alone God’s miracle. At times these two worlds are linked, nowhere
more clearly than in the large-scale finale of Spring, the “Freudenlied” or Song of Joy. It sets out in Singspiel
mode, a delightful Andante dialogue between Hanne and Lukas, whose paean of praise to nature is supported by a chorus of lads
and lasses and graphically illustrates gambolling lambs, swarming bees, shoals of darting fishes, and fluttering birds. The
entry of Simon introduces a more serious note as he brings a reminder that “the charms that inflame you are the Creator’s
breath”. A fermata is reached. After a short pause, time, key (from A to B flat) and mood change totally with the introduction
of a Maestoso section introduced massively ff by the full power of the orchestra. Yet another break follows as a
hymn-like Adagio for the soloists is introduced by clarinets and bassoons, the link with the Maestoso maintained by the chorus’
interjections “Mighty God!”. Finally the chorus takes over with an allegro fugue that brings the huge edifice
(a total of 296 bars) to a triumphant conclusion. Robbins Landon compares its flexibility to that of an operatic finale, but
it is difficult to think of an operatic finale that travels as far as does this one.
We cannot leave The Seasons without some mention of Haydn’s orchestration, which fully maintains
the level he had attained in The Creation. Indeed in its elemental power and colour it in some ways represents an
advance, at times presaging the early Romanticism of composers like Weber. This is particularly evident in the orchestral
introductions to each season, especially those of Summer, Autumn and Winter. That to Spring is the most extensive, a full
scale sonata form movement depicting the passage of winter into spring, with a four-bar Largo introduction in the decrescendos
and trill of which we can sense the final juddering cold of winter. Summer has only the briefest of introductions, a wonderful
chromatic evocation of grey dawn originally scored for divided cellos and basses, but later revised by Haydn for full string
orchestra. The introductions to Autumn and Winter were also shortened by Haydn after the early performances, the former being
a cheerful Allegretto. Winter brings one of the most evocative examples of tone painting in the work, an Adagio founded on
a four-note motif with swirling little wind figures rising out of the winter fog.
Postlude
It has frequently been claimed that it was
van Swieten who hoped to persuade Haydn to complete a trilogy of oratorios by writing one on the subject of the Last Judgement,
thus putting the seal on a grandiose conception that would have embraced the world from its beginning to its end. Yet Haydn,
so legend has it, was now too old and mentally exhausted to undertake another work on such a large scale. However, a letter
of Griesinger’s written on 21 April 1802 tells a rather different story. According to him, Haydn himself suggested an
oratorio on the subject of the Last Judgement and expressed a particular desire, apparently conveyed through no less a person
than the Empress Marie Therese, that the libretto should by written by the great German poet Wieland.[xvii] But Wieland, himself now an elderly man of 75, declined the offer and the plan came to nothing. Even so, it
is doubtful that Haydn could have completed such an undertaking. Only two further major works would be completed, the Schõpfungmesse
(1801) and the great Harmoniemesse of 1802. Thereafter, with the exception of the two movements of the unfinished
String Quartet, op 103, the grand old man remained silent until his death in 1809. But with The Creation and The
Seasons, Haydn left us with an already bountiful legacy in the shape of two of the most uplifting, life-enhancing and
humane masterpieces in the entire repertoire.
