When he visited London in 1791 and 1794, Joseph Haydn enjoyed unprecedented popularity: he was fêted as the greatest living composer of his time. Nor was this enthusiasm one-sided: Haydn in turn was more than happy with conditions in London. He had a superb concert hall at his disposal on Hanover Square, and an outstanding orchestra that was devoted to him, conducted by its first violinist ]. P. Salomon (who was also Haydn’s concert manager in Britain). The position of first oboe was occupied by an equally illustrious figure: William Herschel was one of the leading astronomers of his day.
The special atmosphere of the city on the Thames as a fertile breeding-ground for art and music held great appeal for Haydn. The Austrian composer believed Handel to be the greatest composer of all time, and he wanted to write the work that his idol had failed to compose, namely the story of the Creation after John Milton, which had been rewritten in Handel's day by Lidley (Linley?). The vast body of material presented a daunting challenge: how was any composer to find the right colossal sound and the large-scale form that would link the countless brief episodes into a coherent whole? Haydn seems to have set himself the aim of achieving what Handel had failed to do, and of topping his great predecessor's oratorios with one of his own! The celebrated visitor from abroad derived further inspiration from an overwhelming experience at Herschel’s observatory, where he was filled with awe by the view of the night sky through the astronomer’s telescope: "So big.. so vast..." is apparently all he could say, muttering these words to himself for hours afterwards.
Haydn was acquainted with Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the somewhat eccentric son of the Empress Maria Theresia's personal physician. The Baron was a busy man, with irons in quite a few tires: he was a diplomat, a writer (the libretto to Haydn's Seven Last Words came from his pen), and - from 1776 on - director of the Vienna Court Library. Van Swieten was a passionate champion of "old music", particularly of the scholarly music of Bach and Handel, which, as he put it, "was written in layers and not consecutively". He put on concerts in the library, which it became de rigeur for Viennese society to attend, and he was ridiculed on occasion as the city's "musical high priest". Mozart conducted Handel’s Messiah in van Swieten's concerts (and the musical aristocrat was even able to interest Beethoven in Classical writers such as Jomer and Shakespeare; Beethoven showed his gratitude by dedicating his first symphony to the Baron). These excellent credentials prompted Haydn to ask van Swieten to write a libretto that he could set to music.
Van Swieten devoted himself to the task with such fervour that he even ended up giving Haydn instructions on the form the score should take. But he managed to hit on a tone for the libretto that obviously inspired Haydn, and the result was genuinely moving. Haydn's music and the Baron's text combined to produce an exciting story for children of all ages; the listener follows with eager anticipation every new scene painted in words and music. And for all the sublimity of his subject, Haydn keeps his feet firmly on the ground: anyone familiar with the composer’s marital problems will chuckle at the touching irony with which the continuo comments on Eve's humble words, when the first relationship between man and woman is depicted in the third section of the work!
All this is just as direct, naive and genuine in musical terms as the canvases of the Creation painted by the great masters. Haydn's version of how mankind came into being casts its timeless spell over young and old alike.