Philippe Herreweghe / Orchestre des Champs-Élysées - NOSPR

It was the beginning of Joseph Haydn’s swan song: two of his greatest masterpieces, The Creation and The Seasons were written in the final years of the composer’s life. Haydn worked on The Creation for almost a year and a half. Later, he was to say: “Never was I so pious as when composing The Creation . . . before I sat down to the pianoforte I prayed to God with earnestness that He would enable me to praise Him worthily.” The first public performance of the oratorio was held on 19 March 1799 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. When the opening phrase of the chorus emerged from the introductory part in C minor – full of contrasts and dissonant tensions that stood for primordial chaos – followed by „Und es ward Licht” in C major, powerful as a lightning bolt, the performance had to be interrupted. Unaccustomed to such forceful rhetoric, the audience needed some time to recover from the shock. When they took their seats again, the listeners were flooded with symbols: musical images of snow and hail, the rising sun and the wandering moon, bird song, animal fear, and human love. The Creation is one of the most innovative scores of the end of the 18th century, providing a stylistic link between the Baroque, the Classicism, and  budding Romanticism. It is surprising that this masterpiece was written by a composer who had developed a rather simple and ingenuous way of overcoming creative crises: “I say some Hail Marys, and ideas find their way to me.”