Haydn was at the forefront of music during most of the eighteenth century, hailed as a genius throughout Europe and admired and revered by the public and by his peers. Mozart said, ‘Haydn alone has the secret both of making me smile and of touching my innermost soul’. Even Napoleon, on capturing Vienna, immediately ordered a guard of honour to be placed round Haydn’s house.
For much of his life Haydn’s energies were devoted primarily to composing orchestral and instrumental music. His supreme choral masterpieces including The Creation were all composed in his old age after 1795, the year in which he completed the last of his 104 symphonies.
The Creation, written between 1796 and 1798 depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the biblical Book of Genesis and in 'Paradise Lost', and represents a considerable dramatic development over its Handelian predecessors. Haydn’s bold use of orchestral colour, his adventurous harmony, exceptional rhythmic and melodic inventiveness, and the work’s strong overall unity bring the subject to life with an almost operatic vividness and power.
The first public performance at Vienna’s Burgtheater on 19 March 1799 was sold out far in advance, and Die Schöpfung was performed nearly forty more times in the city during Haydn’s lifetime. It had its London premiere the next year, in an English translation, at the Covent Garden Theatre.
The last performance Haydn attended was on March 27 1808, just a year before he died: the aged and ill Haydn was carried in with great honour on an armchair. According to one account, the audience broke into spontaneous applause at his arrival and "Papa" Haydn, in a typical gesture weakly pointed upwards and said: "Not from me—everything comes from up there!"
Remarkably The Creation was also performed more than forty times outside Vienna during his lifetime: elsewhere in Austria and Germany, throughout England, and in Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Russia and the United States.