With 21 performances in the first 33 years of HCS’s existence, other than Messiah, no work more speaks to Society’s history than Haydn’s great oratorio Creation. Composed towards the end of his life, it was clearly inspired by his visits to Britain in the 1790s when he heard performances of Handel’s work including Messiah and Israel in Egypt.
It’s hard to think of a grander subject, and Haydn’s genius produced the extraordinary overture in sonata form, The Representation of Chaos, which opens the work in C minor, exploding into the major at the creation of light: the audience reaction to this at the 1799 premiere was such that the performance was unable to proceed for several minutes.
Creation may have been inspired by Handel’s work, but it was something entirely new. ‘Papa’ Haydn was the father of classicism and the work is most decidedly in the classical rather than Baroque style. It has been a deserved favourite of HCS audiences right from the Society’s inception – in fact there is a plaque on the building in Spring Street where the Society held its first quarterly meeting on 15th July 1836 which tells us that on that day the members sang Creation – truly the start of a great tradition.
