The Creation

The Creation (German: "Die Schöpfung") is an oratorio written 1796-1798 by Joseph Haydn, and considered by many to be his masterpiece. The oratorio depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the biblical Book of Genesis.

Critical opinions

• "The pleasure of experiencing Haydn and van Swieten's Die Schöpfung lies less in the inevitable trajectory of the plot ? we all know the story, and it contains no real sense of conflict ? than in the wide-eyed wonder with which the composer visits its familiar contours. A childlike quality pervades the work, as if Haydn were relating the narrative to young listeners who had never heard it before." -- James Keller (see link below)
• The Seasons and the Creation are descriptions of the entire universe as Haydn knew it. The imposed simplicity of the pastoral style was the condition which made it possible to grasp subjects of such immensity: without the pretense of naïveté in the deepest sense of the spontaneous and unaffected response of the child's eye to the world, these works could not exist at all." --Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (1971)