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Haydn’s ‘Creation’: Joy Unbounded!
Welcome to the 190th season of Huddersfield Choral Society, which kicks off on 1st November with our rendition of Haydn’s Creation. Read on for HCS Choral Director, Greg Batsleer’s, introduction to the piece and its composer below:
Haydn is a composer that, in my opinion, you can tell always composed with a smile on his face. Interestingly, his parents had always believed that he would join the church and become a priest or some sort of spiritual leader. What in fact happened was that Haydn went to school one day and was acquainted with music; from that day forwards he fell in love and decided that it was this art form that had to be what his life was dedicated to.
Haydn’s work is filled with a fundamental gratitude for the fact that good music exists, and Creation has to be one of the most joyful, enthusiastic and optimistic pieces ever written.
Haydn was very familiar with the music of Handel, the ‘Godfather’ of the English oratorio, and it was clear just how popular Handel’s great choral works were in the UK. In fact, Haydn attended a Handel memorial event at Westminster Abbey, where over a thousand people were singing Israel in Egypt, and was at that point inspired to try his hand at oratorio-writing, hence the composition of Creation which was to be his first.
An oratorio is the telling of great biblical stories through music. The origin of the libretto for Creation is unknown, but recent research indicates that the librettist for Creation is the same as that of the Messiah; it’s very likely, therefore, that this libretto would’ve been put to music by Handel if not for his death.
Creation’s libretto tells the story of the creation of the Earth. It is peppered with a sense of humanistic adoration for just how amazing nature is, how good our world is at its core. Our hope and aspiration for when you, our audience, join us on 1st November is that we will all connect and spend an evening having the time of our lives with what is one of the happiest and most uplifting musical works.