The Orquesta y el Coro Filarmonía, conducted by maestro Pascual Osa, will perform Haydn’s great masterpiece, The Creation, with the solo voices of Francesca Calero, Alain Damas and Francisco Santiago, on 10 December at 19.30 in the Symphonic Hall of the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid.
Some sources state that The Creation was Haydn’s favourite work and, responding to fan mail in 1802, the composer explained that: “a secret voice whispered to me; there are in this world so few happy and contented people; sorrow and grief follow them everywhere, perhaps their work will become a source in which the man inclined to care, or burdened with business affairs, will for a time find peace and rest”. Haydn was a deeply religious man, and this work constitutes his personal statement of faith. The work was begun in 1795, with reference to Handel’s oratorio model in the choruses.
The composer believed that the most important music was vocal music, which he considered to be the most effective in moving the listener and the closest to song, seeing it as the natural source of music. The libretto was written from biblical texts from Genesis, the Book of Psalms and the seventh book of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Thus, the full score, published in 1800 by the composer, contained the text in German and English, making it the first major printed work with a bilingual text.
