“On the 28th of January, 1797, Haydn’s people’s hymn received the imprimatur of Count Saurau,” says a chronology of his life. The people, however, set its real seal of universal value upon this song when they affectionately and enthusiastically appropriated it as their own property. “On the 12th of February, the birthday of the Emperor Francis, Haydn’s people’s hymn was sung in all the theaters of Vienna, and Haydn received a handsome present in compensation,” it is further related. We recognize him in all his modesty in the following note to Count Saurau: “Your Excellency! Such a surprise and mark of favor, especially as regards the portrait of my good monarch, I never before received in acknowledgment of my poor talent. I thank Your Excellency with all my heart and am under all circumstances at your command.” To this day there is generally no patriotic festival in all Germany at which this song is not sung or played as an expression of genuine German popular or patriotic feeling. It is a part of our history as it is of our life. Richard Wagner’s “Kaiser March” is the first that corresponds with it as an expression of popular feeling. In its poesy it is a hymn in contrast with that mere Lied, and, notwithstanding its most powerful and soaring style as a composition, it is, like the Marseillaise, a set scene which arouses the national pride of our time in a glittering sort of way; but Haydn’s song, though belonging to the more primitive era of the nation, still remains as the expression of our most genuine national feeling. Finally it accomplishes a most important work in its special province of art. It reflects the heartiness of the German people in a grand composition, as Mozart had already done in the “Magic Flute,” and is set in a crystalline vase, as it were, for the permanent advantage of art. This is the historical significance of Haydn’s creation. Together with Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” it marks the consummate triumph of German music, and has, like the deep purpose of the preceding epoch of the North German organ-school, especially Sebastian Bach, gradually opened the way to the transcendent dramatic creations of Richard Wagner.
“Haydn wrote ‘The Creation’ in his sixty-fifth year, with all the spirit that usually dwells in the breast of youth,” says Griesinger. “I had the good fortune to be a witness of the deep emotions and joyous enthusiasm which several performances of it under Haydn’s own direction aroused in all listeners. Haydn also confessed to me that it was not possible for him to describe the emotions with which he was filled as the performance met his entire expectation, and his audience listened to every note. ‘One moment I was as cold as ice, and the next I seemed on fire, and more than once I feared I should have a stroke.’” How deeply he infused his own spirit into this composition is shown by another remark: “I was never so pious as during the time I was working upon ‘The Creation.’ Daily I fell upon my knees and prayed God to grant me strength for the happy execution of this work.”
One may see that his heart was in his work. “Accept this oratorio with reverence and devotion,” wrote his brother Michael, himself no ordinary church-composer. The most remarkable characteristic of the work is not, that his choruses rise to the Infinite, as his brother expresses it. Handel has accomplished this, and Bach also, with inexpressibly greater majesty and spiritual power. The heartfelt nature of his music, its incomparable naturalness, its blissful joyousness, its innocence of purpose, like laughter in childhood’s eyes—these are the new and beautiful features of it. A spring fountain of perennial youth gushes forth in melodies like “With Verdure Clad,” “And Cooing Calls the Tender Dove,” “Spring’s Charming Image.” And how full of genuine spirit is some of the much talked of “painting” in this work. The rising of the moon, for instance, is depicted so perceptibly that it almost moves us to sadness. How well Haydn knew the value of discords is shown by the introductory “Chaos!” How his modulations add to the general effects, as for instance, in the mighty climax in the finale of the chorus, “The Heavens are telling the Glory of God!” The stately succession of triads in the old style never fails at the right moment.
This new development of the spontaneous emotions of life, from the fascinating song of the nightingale to the natural expression of love’s happiness in Adam and Eve, could only come from a heart full of goodness, piety, and purity of thought. It is a treasure which Austria has given to the whole German people out of its very heart, and is as meritorious as our classical poetry, and as permanent. This enduring merit of the work transcends all that the esthetic or intellectual critics can find to criticise in the painting of subjects not musical. The ground tone is musical throughout, for it comes from the heart of a man who regards life and the creation as something transcendently beautiful and good, and therefore cleaves to his Creator with child-like purity and thankful soul.
“The Divinity should always be expressed by love and goodness,” Dies heard him say very expressively. This all-powerful force in human existence is the source of the lovely fancies which float about us in the melodies of the “Creation,” enchanting every ear and familiar to every tongue. A criticism made at that time upon Haydn’s measures is to the effect that their predominant characteristics are happy, contented devotion, and a blissful self-consciousness of the heavenly goodness. This is the fundamental trait in all of Haydn’s music, particularly of the “Creation.” He was always certain that an infinite God would have compassion upon His infinite creation, and such a thought filled him with a steadfast and abiding joyousness. That Handel was grand in choruses, but only tolerable in song, he says himself; and this is a proof of his deep feeling for natural life and its individual traits. Still, on the other hand, he guards himself in these pure lyric works from dramatic pathos, and is right when he leaves this to the stage. He acknowledges in his exact recognition of the various problems and purposes of art, that Gluck surpassed others in his poetic intensity and dramatic power. He, himself, with his artistic sense, could sketch the ideal types of nature, inspire them with the breath of life, give them the sparkle of the eye, and the inward gracious quality of his own true, loving and soulful nature. This places him above even his renowned predecessors, contemporaries and followers—Graun, Hasse, Philip Emanuel Bach, Salieri, Cherubini, and the rest, and in this province of art exalts him to the height of the classic. Many of these melodies will certainly live as long as German feeling itself, particularly among youth and the people whose manhood ever freshly renews itself.
The scope and style of the work were also in consonance with its performance. It was first given with astonishing success at the Schwartzenberg Palace, and then, March 19, 1799, at the Burg Theater, and brought him in, according to Dies, four thousand florins. A year later, Beethoven’s very picturesque and attractive Septet was played for the first time at the Schwartzenberg and much admired. “That is my Creation,” Beethoven is said to have remarked at that time. In fact, the form and substance of the “Creation” melodies are manifest in it, but he has gained the power of developing them with greater effect; and yet Beethoven composed one Creation piece, which was unquestionably the result of Haydn’s work—the ballet, “Creations of Prometheus.” The following conversation occurred between the two composers not long afterward: “I heard your ballet yesterday; it pleased me very much,” said Haydn. (It was in the year 1801 that the work was performed.) Beethoven replied: “O, dear Papa, you are very good, but it is far from being a ‘Creation.’” Haydn, surprised at the answer and almost hurt, said, after a short pause: “That is true. It is not yet a ‘Creation,’ and I hardly believe that it will ever reach that distinction,” whereupon they took leave of each other in mutual embarrassment.
If the prejudices of the old master on this occasion against the conceited “Great Mogul” appear to be somewhat too actively displayed, we see him on the other hand in all his modesty, in a letter to Breitkopf and Haertel, the publishers of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: “I only wish and hope, now an old man, that the gentleman critics may not handle my ‘Creation’ too severely nor deal too hardly with it,” he wrote, in sending them the work in the summer of 1799. “They may find the musical grammar faulty in some places, and perhaps other things also, which I have been accustomed for many years to regard as trifles. But a true connoisseur will see the real cause as quickly as myself, and willingly throw such stumbling stones one side. This is, however, between ourselves, or I might be accused of conceit and vanity, from which my heavenly Father has preserved me all my life.”
In the same letter he writes: “Unfortunately my business increases with my years, and yet it almost seems as if my pleasure and inclination to work increase with the diminishing of my mental powers. Oh, God! how much yet remains to be done in this glorious art, even by such a man as I. The world pays me many compliments daily, even upon the spirit of my last works, but no one would believe how much effort and strain they cost me, since many a time my feeble memory and unstrung nerves so crush me down that I fall into the most melancholy state, so that for days afterward, I am unable to find a single idea until at last Providence encourages me. I seat myself at the piano and hammer away, then all goes well again, God be praised.” Griesinger speaks of another method which, he employed in his old age to arouse himself to renewed labor: “When composition does not get on well, I go to my chamber, and, with rosary in hand, say a few Aves, and then the ideas return,” said Haydn.
What further remains? We have spoken of the Kaiser Quartet, and we know that there were several other pieces, among them the op. 82, which has only two movements. “It is my last child,” said he, “but it is still very like me.” As a Finale, he appended to it, in 1806, the introduction of his song, “Hin ist alle meine Kraft” (“Gone is all my power”), which he also had engraved as a visiting card in answer to friends who made inquiries about his condition. In a letter to Artaria, in 1799, he also speaks of twelve new and very charming minuets and trios. His principal composition, however, was a second oratorio, which the Society before spoken of desired, after the success of the “Creation,” and for which Van Swieten again translated the text. It was the “Seasons,” after Thomson.
“Haydn often complained bitterly of the unpoetical text,” says Griesinger, “and how difficult it was for him to compose the ‘Heisasa, Hopsasa, long live the Vine, and long live the Cask which holds it, long live the Tankard out of which it flows.’” He was frequently very fretful over the many picturesquely imitative passages, and, in order to relieve the continual monotony, he hit upon the expedient of representing a drinking scene in the closing fugue of the “Autumn.” “My head was so full of the nonsensical stuff that it all went topsy-turvy, and I therefore called the closing fugue the drunken fugue,” he said. He may have been thinking of the scene he witnessed at the Lord Mayor’s Feast in London, where “the men, as was customary, kept it up stoutly all night, drinking healths amid a crazy uproar and clinking of glasses, with hurrahs.”