page_title: The Creation (Haydn)
section_title: Libretto
hierarchical_section_title: The Creation (Haydn) / Libretto
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Wohnhaus, Zum Haydn &#160; This media shows the protected monument with the number 10532 in Austria. (Commons, de, Wikidata)
context_page_description: The Creation is an oratorio written between 1797 and 1798 by Joseph Haydn, and considered by many to be one of his masterpieces. The oratorio depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the Book of Genesis.
  The libretto was written by Gottfried van Swieten. The work is structured in three parts and scored for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, chorus and a symphonic orchestra. In parts I and II, depicting the creation, the soloists represent the archangels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel. In part III, the bass and soprano represent Adam and Eve.
  The first public performance was held in Vienna at the old Burgtheater on 19 March 1799. The oratorio was published with the text in German and English in 1800.
context_section_description: The text of The Creation has a long history. The three sources are Genesis, the Biblical book of Psalms, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. In 1795, when Haydn was leaving England, the impresario Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815) who had arranged his concerts there handed him a new poem entitled The Creation of the World. This original had been offered to Handel, but the old master had not worked on it, as its wordiness meant that it would have been 4 hours in length when set to music. The libretto was probably passed on to Salomon by Thomas Linley Sr. (1733–1795), a Drury Lane oratorio concert director. Linley (sometimes called Lidley or Liddel) himself could have written this original English libretto, but scholarship by Edward Olleson, A. Peter Brown (who prepared a particularly fine "authentic" score) and H. C. Robbins Landon, tells us that the original writer remains anonymous.
  When Haydn returned to Vienna, he turned this libretto over to Baron Gottfried van Swieten. The Baron led a multifaceted career as diplomat, director of the Imperial Library, amateur musician, and patron of music. He had already collaborated with Haydn as librettist, editing the text for the oratorio version of  The Seven Last Words of Christ, premiered in Vienna in 1796. Swieten recast the English libretto of The Creation in a German translation (Die Schöpfung) that Haydn could use to compose. He also made suggestions to Haydn regarding the setting of individual numbers. The work was published bilingually (1800) and is still performed in both languages today.
  For the quotations from the Bible, Swieten chose to adhere very closely to the English King James Version. According to Temperley, "the German text corresponds to no known German Bible translation. Instead, it is so constructed that the word order, syllabification, and stress patterns are as close as possible to the English. Haydn and Swieten must have realized that English audiences would not easily accept changes in the hallowed text of their Bible; and there were the formidable precedents of Messiah and Israel in Egypt to bear in mind."
  In the final form of the oratorio, the text is structured as recitative passages of the text of Genesis, often set to minimal accompaniment, interspersed with choral and solo passages setting Swieten's original poetry to music. Swieten incorporated excerpts from Psalms for choral movements.
  Van Swieten was evidently not a fully fluent speaker of English, and the metrically-matched English version of the libretto suffers from awkward phrasing that fails to fit idiomatic English text onto Haydn's music. For example, one passage describing the freshly minted Adam's forehead ended up, “The large and arched front sublime/of wisdom deep declares the seat”. Since publication, numerous attempts at improvement have been made, but many performances in English-speaking countries avoid the problem by performing in the original German. The discussion below quotes the German text as representing van Swieten's best efforts, with fairly literal renderings of the German into English; for the full versions of both texts see the links at the end of this article.
caption: Haydn lived in this large house, then in the suburbs of Vienna, while composing The Creation. It is a Haydn museum today.
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa", "Image DateTime": "2012:09:03 20:19:20", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image ExifOffset": "96", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "364", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4388", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:08:07 20:26:30", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "8192", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2979", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "8192", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2979", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "228", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "f628a232059fadb511497f20397bfd87"}