When Joseph Haydn visited London for the first time, the name that kept coming up over and over again in the whirlwind of his social interactions was that of Georg Friedrich Handel, the German composer who had worked in England until his death a decade earlier. In May of 1791, Haydn had the chance to ascertain that Handel's music was not simply a cultural affair meant for a select group of sophisticated aristocrats with conservative tastes, but something that was greeted with rapture by wide swathes of the public. As part of a memorial festival for Händel, several large-scale oratorios, including Israel in Egypt, Esther, Saul, Judas Maccabaeus and The Messiah, were played over the course of several days, not infrequently involving over a thousand participants. On these occasions, Westminster Abbey was packed to overflowing with music lovers who had come to pay their respects to the memory of the Baroque master. According to a contemporary report, Haydn was beside himself after witnessing the amazing experience.
By the end of the decade, he himself had composed a massive, three-part oratorio: The Creation, whose libretto had previously also made its way into Handel's hands. The original libretto was written by an English poet named Lindley based on Milton's Paradise Lost. Haydn brought this text back to Vienna with him and had it translated into German. The work enjoyed enormous success, and there is something symbolic about the fact that it was created at the very end of the century of Enlightenment, since hearing the work reveals to us a world that is inherently good and knowable. Even the Lucifer of Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man would be hard put to find anything in this world to criticise: 'The vast construction's come to life indeed... For aeons shall the giant wheel revolve before a spoke may falter round its axis.'

Presented by: Hungarian Radio Music Groups