The Cantata Singers & Ensemble 2002-03 Season

Program Notes, The Creation

Non moriar sed vivam
Et narrabo opera Domini

Die I shall not, but live
and proclaim the works of the Lord

This inscription on Franz Joseph Haydn’s tomb captures the whole of his long life’s work. From his impetuous and daring early efforts to his sublimely refined mature compositions, Haydn’s music, as much as that of the great musical preachers Bach and Schütz, serves one purpose–to praise God. In this respect, little distinction lies between Haydn’s secular compositions, the symphonies and string quartets, and the liturgical works, the masses. All of his greatest music lives rather equally in, and removed from, this finite world. The symphonies, some quite obviously so–like the three that are subtitled Lamentatione, Alleluia and La Passione–are as profoundly lifted by spiritual impulse as the Time of War and Lord Nelson Masses, settings that themselves are excited by truly symphonic sensibilities. It is in one work, however, the non-liturgical, religious Die Schöpfung, that Haydn achieved the perfect, delicate balance between the sacred and the secular.

Composed when he was sixty-six, The Creation represents the pinnacle of a musical lifetime devoted to developing, exploring and stretching the possibilities of his, and everyone’s, musical language. Since Haydn never lacked a grip on the probing and profound, his life’s ultimate achievement emerged when he had earned a fluid musical thought that was so sophisticated that he could easily and simultaneously embrace subtlety and directness, and so finely-tuned that his technique disappears before our very ears. From the first pages of The Creation, Haydn’s masterful ability to hold in perfect equilibrium musical technique and emotional content, the profane and the sacred, is manifest.

For all of the disorienting chromaticism and moment-to-moment ambiguous harmony of the oratorio’s overture, Chaos flows with perfect logic and amazing control, in a thoroughly disciplined sonata form. Haydn was, after all, the prime developer of the form’s possibilities and, by his mature years, was uniquely able to disguise, overlap and merge its ordinarily clear divisions at the same time that he sharpened the form’s emotional vigor. There is no more forward-looking music until halfway through the next century. Likewise, there is no music more of its time. Chaos from control–what more potent expression could there be of God’s presence even in the moment before the realization of the Universe!

Every chorus, aria, and recitative–every measure–of this beloved oratorio represents Haydn working at the absolute peak of his power to create a work of highest inspiration and innumerable wonders. To single out any moment in this music whose marvels are so unmistakable to anyone, music-lover or trained composer, first-time listener or old friend of every imaginative turn, risks throwing off its precious balance. But I cannot resist glancing at one of the tiniest magical moments that never fails to make me smile, a brief recitative in the first part.

Following the gloriously hectic strumming of lyres and strings in praise of God’s having clothed the earth in foliage, “Stimmt an die Saiten, ergreift die Leier!”, Uriel introduces the fourth day. He begins, “And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven, to divide the day from the night and to give light upon the earth, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days, and years.” With hushed awe this moment unfolds, simplicity ennobled by sacred dignity. Uriel seems to finish his thought, but then remembers, “He made the stars also.” In Genesis this moment carries incredible weight but here, Haydn, with a twinkle in his own eye, tosses off the final line with a couple of little leaps–as if the stars were merely an afterthought in God’s great plan. From this effortless turn the enormity of God’s act is made vivid. Such loving light-heartedness could come only from an ideal marriage of musical nimbleness and spiritual calm.

The consistent balance between the sacred and the secular is not only perfect, but also supremely subtle. One of the most potent occurrences rests in the relationship between the two Adam and Eve duets. Some musicians find the second duet, in contrast to its sublime predecessor, redundant and banal. Some performances even cut the second duet. Those who do so are on to something, for its awkwardness is quite real. I simply believe that this characteristic is quite intentional.

In their first duet, the fully innocent Adam and Eve direct their praises entirely toward their Lord, and the glowing voices of Heaven look happily upon the most recent fruits of God’s labor. Humanity and nature rest in perfect accord. Then, for the first time, in the oratorio’s longest and most detailed recitative, the attention shifts quite significantly. Adam asks Eve to follow him and she replies that his will–silently setting aside God’s–shall be her law. It can be no accident, and is a detail that we feel at least on a subconscious level, that at the moment Eve pledges her devotion to Adam, the harmony turns to G-flat, the greatest possible distance from the pure C major of their first inspired duet and the first, blinding moment of creation. The closing measures of this recitative turn quite dark and lonely, and flirt with untouched exotic, if not dangerous, territory.

Adam and Eve’s duet that follows this fateful turn is, on the surface, a parallel to its lofty predecessor. Both duets begin in an expansive tempo followed by a quick second half. But in the parallels lie the crucial difference: the sacred has become the profane. The couple and the angels sang their praises to the Lord in the first duet, but in the second, God’s highest creations sing their praises alone, and only to each other. “The world, so great, so wonderful, is the work of Your hand,” has become, “All my life I live for you, your love is my reward.” The sublime serenity that bathed the slow section of the first duet turns, in the second, sublimely sensuous. The flexible, unfettered range of expression in the quick music of the first duet becomes constrained in the fast music of the second. Suddenly earthbound, the second duet is locked into squarer phrases, a more limited palate, and a rough-hewn, though charming, peasant tone is urged on by bleating hunting horns. Moreover, the nature of the lovers’ vocal lines changes. In the first, the two voices intertwine with great intricacy and delicacy; in the second, the two either sing in parallel or simply stand listening to each other as the other flits about. And, for the first and only time in this great oratorio so full of incredible virtuosity, the brilliance becomes showy and self-serving.

Not for a moment, however, does Haydn paint the fallen couple with anything but the most sympathetic and loving tone. Adam and Eve are Papageno’s and Papagena’s direct ancestors. Their duet is, just as suspected, banal! But seldom has earthiness been so sublime or shallowness so touching.

Leaving behind the robust key of E-flat major, Uriel’s final recitative offers a gentle moral and glances back to C major, as if to remind the young couple of what had once been a pure, celestial connection. Then it quickly descends to the majestic, if earthly, key of B-flat. In this new world, all the voices resoundingly proclaim the glories of the Lord. But, never to be regained on earth, Paradise has been lost.

In all of Die Schöpfung there is not one unsure move, every moment reflecting the whole and the largest vista flowing from every tiny decision. God looks over all and, at the same time, lives in every detail, the universe as Haydn knew it. From his hard-earned sophistication, unceasing joy flows effortlessly. And a limitless compositional mastery, married to a utterly honest, deep devotion, lets this, Haydn’s greatest achievement, come to every listener in every generation, every time, completely fresh.

–David Hoose