Christians love the Bible’s account of creation in Genesis. It is an absolutely magnificent literary work. As God-breathed Scripture, it is not only true and beautiful, but also life-giving to the soul. Among the great oratorios of history is “The Creation,” composed between 1796 and 1798 by Franz Joseph Haydn. While not as well-known as other large choral works like Handel’s “Messiah,” it is a magnificent work for choir and orchestra, considered by many to be one of his greatest masterpieces. Perhaps the reason “The Creation” is not as well-known as “Messiah” is that Haydn’s masterpiece is not associated with any of the annual Christian holiday seasons.
The libretto (the words) from an unknown author was given to Haydn. He turned it over to Baron Gottfriend van Swieten, a Dutch born Austrian diplomat who, as an amateur musician, was a patron to several composers, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Swieten produced the finished version, translating it into German, but using the English King James Version of Bible for scripture quotations. It is based on the biblical account in Genesis, select passages from the Psalms, and John Milton’s massive work, “Paradise Lost.” It generally takes an hour and 45 minutes to perform the entire work.
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was the most famous composer of his time. He helped develop new musical forms like the string quartet and the symphony. In fact, even though he didn’t invent it, Haydn is known as the “Father of the Symphony.” He was born in the tiny Austrian town of Rohrau, where his father made huge wooden carts and wagon wheels. His mother was a cook. Wen he was eight years old, Joseph (he was now called Franz) went to Vienna to sing in the choir at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and to attend the choir school. His younger brother, Michael, joined him a short time later. Joseph could never resist playing a joke, which got him in trouble at school. Since Michael Haydn was much better behaved than his brother, everyone incorrectly expected that he would become the more successful musician. And he sang as a soprano in that choir from the age of eight until he was 18 years old. Back in those days boys’ voices didn’t change until later. Even J. S. Bach was a soprano until he was 19. Anyway, at the time Haydn’s voice changed he was thrown out of the choir and was really poverty-stricken. For about eight years he struggled just trying to make it as a poor musician, and to his great fortune the Prince of Esterhazy invited him to become his court musician and Haydn had that position for thirty years.
That was a dream job for him, serving with a rich, powerful family of the house of Esterhazy. It was Haydn’s job to write music for the Esterhazy princes, and to conduct their orchestra. Haydn composed symphonies, operas, string quartets, and many other kinds of music for performance at the Esterhazy court. He was a good businessman, and music publishing made him and his music famous all over Europe. After he retired from working for the Esterhazy family, he made two very successful trips to England, where audiences at concerts of his music treated him like a superstar.
He is regarded to be one of the greatest masters of classical music. His compositions include 104 symphonies, 50 concertos, 84 string quartets, 24 stage works, and 12 Masses, among numerous other works. Given great scope for composition, most of his musical output was produced during the 29 years of service to the Esterhazy family. The last movement of the Farewell symphony ends in a long slow section during which one musician after another ceases to play and leaves the stage, until only the conductor and a single violinist remain to complete the work. In the 1780s, Haydn received commissions from London and Paris and honors from all over Europe. He formed a close friendship with Mozart, an association that influenced the music of each. Haydn’s works were known for his originality, liveliness, optimism and instrumental brilliance. In “The Creation” he produced a work deliberately planned on the grand scale for solo voices, chorus and orchestra. In 1800 Haydn set to work on another oratorio of similar magnitude: “The Seasons.” Haydn’s output was so large that at the end of his life, he himself could not be sure how many works he had written. Haydn died in Vienna Austria on May 31, 1809.
“The Creation” was produced at roughly the same time as Mozart’s famous “Requiem,” but the two are polar opposites in mood. Whereas Mozart’s “Requiem” is a pessimistic work focused on death and the end of the world, Haydn’s “The Creation” provides listeners with a radiant vision of the Genesis creation story similar to that depicted in Michelangelo’s frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Mozart’s “Requiem” is music of darkness; Haydn’s “The Creation” is music of light. Indeed, one of the most famous moments of Haydn’s “The Creation” is when the chorus says, “and there was light.” Mozart may have even played a role in inspiring Haydn to compose “The Creation.” In 1789, Mozart produced a version of Handel’s “Messiah” with updated orchestrations. This may have been Haydn’s first exposure to Handel’s famous oratorio, which had been premiered in Dublin decades earlier and was still relatively unknown outside Britain. He certainly heard it and other oratorios by Handel during the celebrated trips to London he took after Mozart’s untimely death.
Haydn was a devoutly religious man; at the end of every score he finished he wrote “Laus Deo,” Latin for “praise be to God.” He himself saw “The Creation” as his greatest masterpiece, as the culmination of his life’s work as a composer. He poured all of his skill into this, the most ambitious project of his life. Critics have written that the music’s melodic inventiveness, originality and contrapuntal richness are dazzling; the orchestral writing is full of wit and color; the choruses full of grandeur and majesty; and the vocal solos truly soar. In the end, all of this musical genius serves to create a feeling of joy and optimism in listeners. The libretto follows the days of creation in Genesis and is structured with thirty-four movements in three parts, the first dealing with the Creation of the universe and the plants, the second with the Creation of the animals, and of man and woman, and the third with Adam and Eve in Paradise, showing an idealized love in harmony within the “new world.”
The hymn “Exalt the Lord, His Praise Proclaim,” uses material from Haydn’s work, and was included in “The Psalter, 1912” as a hymn based on Psalm 135:1-7, 21. This is one of several hymns that uses material drawn from classical compositions. Other examples found in the 1990 “Trinity Hymnal” include are “O God Beyond All Praising” (from Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter” in “The Planets” suite – no. 660), “We Are God’s People” (from Johannes Brahms’ “Symphony No. 1 in C Minor” – no. 355), “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” – no. 247), “O Lord, I Love You, My Shield, My Tower” (from Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Symphony no. 3 in C Minor – no. 620), and “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying” (from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata no. 4 – no. 317). We also have hymns that are loosely based on melodies from George Frideric Handel and Felix Mendelssohn.
The text for “Exalt the Lord, His Praise Proclaim” is drawn from Psalm 135. In the King James Version, the Psalm begins, “Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the name of the Lord; praise Him, O ye servants of the Lord.Ye that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord; for the Lord is good: sing praises unto His name; for it is pleasant.” In the “Psalter 1912,” it has been joined to an arrangement of the music from Haydn’s “The Creation.” It is based on one of the six choruses in Haydn’s oratorio, with the text, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.”
Stanza 1 is set as a call to worship, asking that all who serve the Lord join their voices to lift up His praise. Since this is directed to all who stand to humbly serve the Lord in his house, we should realize that this includes not only those who are actually present, and those who should be present, to respond to the call of their Creator. While it is not stated deliberately, we should imagine this call to worship being extended throughout heaven, to include all the saints of the ages who today stand in His house, along with all the angels who were created for this very purpose, to laud His name. Typical of the Psalms, we are not only called to praise the Lord, We are also told why it is right for us to do so: it is because His is so good, and because He has taken us to be His peculiar treasure!
Exalt the Lord, His praise proclaim;
All ye His servants, praise His name,
Who in the Lord’s house ever stand
And humbly serve at His command.
The Lord is good, His praise proclaim;
Since it is pleasant, praise His name;
His people for His own He takes
And His peculiar treasure makes.
Stanza 2 takes the form of a public profession of faith on the part of the singer (in the first person singular). We proclaim our faith in our God, who is high above us in transcendent glory and power and majesty, far above any other entity or cause that we could be tempted to regard as a god. Not only is He high above all other pretenders to the throne in His lofty estate. He is also great above all others in that He has shown His willingness and ability to act to do whatever He has decreed should be. The hymn text points specifically to that sovereign power as it has been and continues to be exercised in creation, in heaven as well as earth, in the seas and in the skies, and in the thunderstorms that form and flash and roar around this globe,
I know the Lord is high in state,
Above all gods our God is great;
The Lord performs what He decrees,
In heav’n and earth, in depths and seas.
He makes the vapors to ascend
In clouds form earth’s remotest end;
The lightnings flash at His command;
He holds the tempest in His hand.
Stanza 3 begins by repeating the opening lines of the hymn verbatim. It then adds a more direct call to those who gather in the church, reminding us that in our worship, we are serving Him. This is the meaning of one of the most common scripture words for worship: avodah (Hebrew) – to serve.
Exalt the Lord, His praise proclaim;
All ye, His servants, praise his name,
Who in the Lord’s house ever stand
And humbly serve at His command.
Forever praise and bless His name,
And in the church His praise proclaim;
In Zion is His dwelling place;
Praise ye the Lord, show forth His grace.
Here is a link to the hymn being sung in English by a Dutch men’s chorus.