Glorious creation
Amal Choucri Catta discovers the mystery of the universe
Barts Academic Festival Orchestra and Choir, Franz Joseph Haydn's The Creation, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 1 March
This concert was so popular Cairo Opera's main hall was full to the brim, with some late comers forced to stand around the aisles. After all, the Cairo audience does not have the chance to listen to Franz Joseph Haydn's Creation very often, and certainly not when it is performed by an English orchestra with choir and soloists. Founded by John Lumley in 1972, the Barts Academic Festival Orchestra, who did the honours, is based at the Royal Hospital of St Bartholomew, in the heart of London City. Made up of some 40 singers and 100 musicians, it performs six charity concerts in the Great Hall of the hospital every year. Both orchestra and choir have undertaken successful tours of Europe and the Middle East, but their present visit occurs on the occasion of the launch of Refaat Kamel and John Lumley's Textbook of Tropical Surgery at the WHO Regional headquarters -- a cause for celebration indeed. Nor did the performance let the audience down. The three vocal soloists, whose names were omitted from the programme -- entirely devoted to the celebrated Oratorio -- were brilliant as the three arch-angels: Raphael, bass; Uriel, tenor; and Gabriel, soprano. Inspired by the Book of Genesis, the Psalms and Milton's Paradise Lost, The Creation is among Haydn's best appreciated works.
Born in Rohrau in 1732, the son of a farmer- wheelwright, Haydn showed exceptional aptitude for music as a child -- so much so that, at the age of five, a Hainburg schoolmaster took him under his wing, teaching him the rudiments of the art. From the age of eight until his voice broke at 17, he became a choirboy at Vienna's St Stephen Cathedral. For a while afterwards he lived in poverty as a teacher, becoming accompanist and servant to the Italian composer Nicola Antonio Porpora. Eventually Prince Paul Esterhazy appointed him director of the Eisenstadt chapel orchestra in Hungary, and he stayed for 30 years with the Esterhazy household. His fame spread from Hungary to the rest of Europe, and every portion of his vast output contains a delightful surprise or two. The "father of symphony", Haydn's works are too numerous to detail. With 25 operas, 104 symphonies, 12 masses, 10 cantatas, 15 concertos, 103 string quartets and 62 keyboard sonatas as well as chamber music and vocal compositions to his name, however, he is among the most prolific composers in history. He died in Vienna in 1809, a major luminary of the 18th century.
The two oratorios, The Seasons and The Creation, remain Haydn's best known works. The latter employs soprano, tenor and bass soloists as well as choir and orchestra to recount the events of the six days of Creation, divided into three main parts. It is an extraordinary work that mingles arias with recitative sequences and instrumental music. The overture is a moving pianissimo that depicts the Word: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." It gives way to what can only be described as a sudden swelling of the music, reflecting the Big Bang -- total chaos: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Thus the chorus sings beautifully, followed by an aria in which Archangel Uriel celebrates the triumph of order and light. This shapely melody is impressively doubled by a flute, the symbol of pastoral innocence. The tempo quickens as Uriel describes the plunge of the "ghastly ghosts of hell into the abyss". Haydn's first day ends with the chorus announcing the emergence of the newly created world in a melody of delightful, folk-like simplicity.
The second day opens with the creation of the firmament and the parting of the waters announced by Raphael in secco, followed by an orchestrally accompanied recitative: "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters; let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above, and it was good." So the Archangel announces, while the music soars to solemn heights depicting the storms, the lightning (flute), the thunder (drums), the ravaging hail, the reviving rain and, finally, with exquisite delicacy, the snowflakes. Gabriel celebrates the second day in a C-major movement, with oboe- obligato laid out for maximum clarity and brilliance. Towards the end, the soprano rises to high-C above orchestra and chorus. Then the third day begins.
The third day encompasses not one but two acts of creation: Raphael, in secco -recitative, narrates the division of the land in a magnificent aria that describes the water "rolling in foaming waves". Here tone permeates both texture and theme, beginning with a powerful description of the turbulent ocean. The second subject concerns the mountains: the "devious course of the broad rivers" is introduced with beautiful contrapuntal writing for oboes and bassoon, proceeding against pictorial flourishes of the violin. A secco -recitative describes the creation of fields and trees: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit." Gabriel sings the most famous aria of the Oratorio: "With verdure clad the fields appear", a pastoral dominated by the mellow sonority of clarinets and bassoons, which evolve into a dramatic climax as the wooded mountains are evoked. A brief recitative from Uriel introduces a grandiose chorus, culminating in a sequence of joyous coloratura.
The recitative in question effects the transition to the fourth day, in which the creation of "lights in the firmament" takes place: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also." Haydn elaborated on this theme in one of the Oratorio's most sublime passages. As Uriel's recitative announces, "In splendour bright the sun is rising now," the first sunrise is depicted in a slow, majestic crescendo, and the first moonrise magically portrayed, while the tenor's aria is accompanied by pianissimo strings. Only then does the chorus chime in: "The heavens declare the glory of God." And the movement comes to a massive, chromatic climax. As the Oratorio's second part starts, Gabriel's F-major aria announces the fifth day and the creation of the birds.
The soaring eagle is represented by the orchestra's initial rising unison figure, the lark by a dotted melody on the clarinet, and the cooing doves by the soprano's delicate coloratura. An expressively modulated string theme combines with a chirping flute motif to evoke the "nightingale's sweet notes", as the voice of the Archangel declares: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." Raphael then narrates the creation of whales: "And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and God saw that it was good." After a luminously scored trio for the three Archangels, Gabriel sings of the "verdant hills" and Uriel of the "merry swarms of birds", while Raphael enters with new music, describing the fish, and the immense "Leviathan" delightfully evoked by the lower strings. The trio ends with a brilliant song of praise, with chorus and soloists bringing the fifth day to an end.
Archangel Raphael introduces the sixth day and the appearance "of numberless creatures of all kinds": here Haydn creates a musical lexicon in the process of illustrating the "various creatures" as they appear in turn. The lion enters with the gleeful dissonant roar of two trombones and a contra- bassoon, followed by the "supple tiger" with leaping upward scales for violins, the "swift stag" in a hunting rhythm and the "noble steed" with a bounding, bucking figure. A gentle tune on the pastoral flute introduces sheep and cattle, while "myriads of insects" are depicted by string tremolos and the "creeping things drag their long trail along the ground" in a quasi-solemn adagio. Raphael's aria "Now heavens shine in all their glory" boldly leads the movement to the final "creation of man and woman". He announces: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth." Here Uriel sings the celebrated aria "In native worth and honour clad", introducing Adam in the first part and Eve in the second: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." The third and final part of the Oratorio is dedicated to the praise of God, with the choir singing "Achieved is the glorious work," followed by Adam and Eve's duet with chorus: "By thee with bliss, O bounteous Lord". The Oratorio gradually comes to its triumphant end with the chorus glorifying the wonders of the world, singing resounding "Hallelujahs" as the audience solemnly rises to applaud this extraordinary musical experience.
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