Genesis
It all began for Haydn in the spectacular surroundings of Westminster Abbey, a year after his first arrival in London. 1791 marked the sixth of a series of lavish commemoration concerts celebrating the life and works of George Frideric Handel. It was the largest one yet. Sitting amongst an audience of 2,000 listeners, Haydn experienced ‘with rapturous astonishment’ the sheer sonic power of nearly 1000 amassed musicians performing two of the nation’s favourite choral works: Handel’s Israel in Egypt, and Messiah. It was certainly a splendid scene to behold, with rows of trumpets bedecked in banners of silver and gold thread. Sitting in a box near the Royal Family, Haydn would never forget the moment that the entire audience, led by the King and Queen, rose from their seats for the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ Haydn had attended performances of Handel’s Oratorios back in Vienna, staged by the Gesellschaft der Associierten at the behest of one of the most influential patrons of the age: Baron van Swieten. But they could not compare to the grandeur of the English choral tradition. The experience was revelatory for Haydn, ultimately fueling his turn to choral composition and oratorio in the last years of his life.

Haydn was not immediately convinced. Upon his return to Vienna, he swiftly sought a second opinion. Fortunately, Baron van Swieten, Vienna’s great authority on Handelian oratorio, also saw an opportunity for Haydn ‘to express the full force of his inexhaustible genius.’ He agreed to adapt and translate the libretto into German. The result was a remarkable collaboration that saw the first publication of an oratorio in a bilingual format. Like many historic firsts, it was not met with universal praise. The success of van Swieten’s English translation in particular came under critical scrutiny early on. In 1802, Anna Seward complained bitterly:

Yet there is no denying that Haydn’s Creation was a wild success, in Vienna and London alike, both within his lifetime and beyond.

Haydn knew how to entice and astonish his listeners.
The tantalising sight of the amassed orchestra, a dazzling panoply of strings, wind, timpani and brass, including three trombones and an enormous contrabassoon – a novelty in Vienna – was undoubtedly a wonder in itself. The effect of overwhelming sonic splendour on that radiant burst of C major on the word ‘light’ is nothing short of miraculous. Listeners felt that they were not just hearing a representation of light, but experiencing the physical presence of light itself. The effect is ingeniously crafted from the very first note. After the first orchestral unison C fades back to nothingness, Haydn leads us through a labyrinth of evocative yet evasive harmonic twists and turns, punctuated by amorphous rhythmical impulses. The use of muted strings evokes sonic otherness, as though we are peering into another world. It is a dazzling sleight of hand. The most sophisticated of harmonic and musical means are used to conjure their very absence: the nothingness, the lack of art, at the beginning of time. Haydn knew exactly what he was doing. The Swedish diplomat, Frederik Silverstolpe, described how Haydn had shown him the passage at the piano, remarking:

Seeing and Hearing
Haydn also showed Silverstolpe Raphael’s first aria: ‘You see how the notes run up and down like waves; see there too, the mountains that come from the depths of the sea?’ His invitation to ‘see’ the musical effects tells us something crucial about how he wanted listeners to experience the music. Indeed, early listeners described their experiences of The Creation in strikingly audio-visual, immersive terms. After the first public performance in Vienna, Joseph Richter wrote that

In 1802, Carl Zelter described how:

Shadow-plays were a new form of entertainment in salon culture that drew on the latest science and technology to conjure spectacular scenery and moving images before the very eyes of the viewers. This type of spectacle was pioneered in London by the artist and set designer of the Drury Lane Theatre, Philip de Loutherberg, who had opened the ‘Eidophusikon’ – an early form of cinema, particularly famed for its realistic depictions of nature, and even scenes from Milton’s Paradise Lost – in 1781. There is no record that Haydn himself attended the ‘Eidophusikon’, but he did make a specific note of his encounter with Loutherberg while visiting Portsmouth. Ever a keen observer of people, he was also highly alert to the latest intellectual and cultural trends in the London public. Haydn could not have missed the newly-popular fascination with the natural world, including all of the exciting new ways of ‘seeing’ it, that was bubbling in the air.

Collisions
Through The Creation, Haydn pioneered a kind of immersive, visual listening that was entirely new, but also entirely of its time, playing into public fascination with the capabilities of new technologies and their complex relationships with the natural world. Just as the artist Thomas Gainsborough was overwhelmed by the realism of the moving images in Loutherberg’s ‘Eidophusikon’, Haydn conjures birds and beasts before our eyes and ears as vividly as though we ourselves are having close encounters with tigers in the Tower of London.