Die Schöpfung (The Creation) I Oratorio for soloists, choir and orchestra Hob:XXI:2

Haydn’s (apparent) unruffled religiosity is riven by mighty portents of the music to come. By the time “The Creation,” an oratorio that owes much to the impressions aroused by hearing Handel in England, appeared in 1798, Beethoven was already writing the Pathetic Sonata, injecting a substantial foretaste of Romanticism into the Age of Enlightenment. Haydn, too, however, opens up to more modern colors, in an attempt to render pictorially the upheavals of nature, in comparison with which man is a small thing, but far from insignificant: here are the bellowing winds, the thunderbolts, the clouds, the light. A mighty orchestra with three trombones, horns, trumpets and timpani surpasses the polished sound of the 1700s and offers powerful and theatrical images. But above all, from the depths of the heart of an almost 70-year-old composer, there emerges with overflowing force a wonder-filled tenderness, a moved gratitude before the beauty, goodness and innocence of the world.