Arun Choral Society is currently hard at work rehearsing for our next concert, Haydn’s The Creation, which we will perform in the stunning setting of Arundel Cathedral at 7.30pm on Saturday 21 October 2023. Dr Joe Paxton will be directing, and we are delighted to be joined by the 40-piece Sinfonia of Arun and three superb soloists Jess Wise (soprano), Dominic Lee (tenor) and Owain Gwynfryn (bass). Tickets are on sale now from www.wegottickets.com/arunchoralsociety or via email at boxoffice@arunchoralsociety.co.uk.
With 4 weeks to go until we perform The Creation, our membership secretary Dee Tilbury has been researching this magnificent work and its composer Franz Joseph Haydn. Here is the first part of Dee’s fascinating blog for your interest and enjoyment. Please do check back each week over the next 4 weeks when we will publish the next instalment in Dee’s blog…
The Joy of Creating the Universe: Haydn’s The Creation
INTRODUCTION
If you have never listened to The Creation, then you might, as I did, dismiss it as a rather boring, old-fashioned piece of music with no place in our modern world. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth! The Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is a musical gem! The whole piece is shot through with light. The music is upbeat, joyous and as fresh as the day it was composed in 1798.
If Bizet’s opera Carmen is considered the perfect introduction to opera, Haydn’s Creation must surely be the perfect introduction to choral music! It is a joy for adults and children alike. It has something for everyone: wonderful orchestral interludes, a marvellous story told with humour and quirky words, beautiful solos and the sudden outpouring of joyful singing from a large choir of angels, unable to contain itself from expressing the wonder at the creation of our rich and incredibly beautiful Earth. And at the end of the concert, you won’t be able to contain yourself either! You will go home with a song in your heart, knowing that you have just experienced something joyously uplifting.
From the moment the orchestra strikes up the first chord, your ears will tell you that something very momentous and amazing is about to happen. And it is! For what follows in the opening bars is the most illuminating music which surely must have inspired Mendelssohn to use in his Midsummer Night’s Dream to capture the enchanted atmosphere needed for his fairy scenes. Here Haydn uses his creative genius to capture the very essence of a growing shimmering light of the first ever dawning of light. It is truly awe-inspiring.
The Creation is the work of a maestro-composer who had refined his musical skills through decades of composing music for the same orchestra. He spent most of his long life working as a court musician for a wealthy Austrian Prince of the Esterhazy family. With a resident orchestra, Haydn had to work hard to keep his players happy and provided them with musical arrangements which were interesting for them to play. Cut off from the mainstream of musical Europe for much of this time, he learnt to develop his own individual style. Thus, if you love orchestral music, you will love The Creation. Haydn is said to have had a very good sense of humour and loved practical jokes, and you will notice this in his music. The piece is interspersed with the most divine orchestral arrangements of woodwind, brass and string which will be a joy for you to hear. But it is also full of unusual sounds which will take you by surprise and make you smile.
To undertake to write an oratorio of The Creation would be daunting for anyone. But by 1798 when Hadyn finally tackled the subject, he was at the height of his powers and at last had the wealth and time to be able to take his time to write it as well as his other masterpiece Nelson Mass. He eagerly began to compose the music for an oratorio which is to this day still as full of life and joy as the day on which it was composed. He expertly managed to capture the astonishment and wonder which the angels must have felt as they witnessed the unfolding of the brilliance and beauty of the Universe which God was creating.
The whole piece is beautiful in its simplicity. Soloists, orchestra and choir complement each other rather than any one of them dominating the others. It is this simplicity which is so pleasing to the ear. It speaks to us of a time when a world which, after long years of wars, had at last achieved a more settled peace and was renewing and expressing the hope of a new, calmer world, free from war when music and the arts could be developed and enjoyed.
Go to the next instalment of Dee’s blog here ☞
Deirdre Tilbury, Membership Secretary, Arun Choral Society 2023
Tickets for Arun Choral Society’s performance of Haydn’s The Creation are now on sale from www.wegottickets.com/arunchoralsociety or via email at boxoffice@arunchoralsociety.co.uk.