The Creation An Oratorio

Late in his career, Haydn, inspired by the oratorios of Handel, turned to composing oratorios himself, launching what would become a final brilliant and successful phase of his extraordinary rich and productive musical life. The Creation is the most majestic achievement of that phase, a choral masterwork of seamless perfection that joyfully celebrates the wonders related in the Book of Genesis. In The Creation, Haydn combined the tradition of the Handelian oratorio and the Viennese mass with his own symphonic style to depict the glories of nature and man's innocent joy in it. That he did so with youthful freshness and vigor even at an advanced age is vivid testament to the rarity of his genius. Music lovers will find in these pages the spiritually qualities that have made The Creation, after Handel's Messiah, the most popular and most performed oratorio of all time.