Haydn's Creation is one of the great masterpieces of the classical period. In this absorbing and original account the author places the work within the oratorio tradition, contrasting the theological and literary character of the English libretto with the Viennese milieu of the first performances. The complete text is provided in both English and German versions as a reference point for discussion of the design of the work and the musical treatment of the words. A more detailed musical chapter examines the work through the movement types it employs - arias and ensembles, recitative and choruses - distinguishing the Handelian model from Haydn's own classical idiom. Nicholas Temperley also discusses the changing performance traditions of this work, surveys the critical reception throughout its history and quotes from the most signifcant critical literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A Choral Worship Cantata in SATB voicing composed by Franz Joseph Haydn, edited by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker.

"Haydn: The Creation" presents a thorough treatment of the genesis, structure, and performance implications of this perennial favorite. This volume draws upon recent research on the oratorio and on "The Creation" in particular. Incorporating the author's own research over the last 15 years, this volume traces the two-hundred-year history of the piece, analyzes its style, and brings together in a single source the relevant criticism and significant observations of the other specialists in this field, making it the definitive volume on this work for decades to come. Bruce MacIntyre is Associate Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center where he teaches general courses in musicology as well as specialized courses on late eighteenth-century music, the mass and oratorio, and the music of Haydn.

A Choral Worship Cantata in SATB voicing composed by Franz Joseph Haydn, edited by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker.

Haydn is enjoying renewed appreciation: this book explores fresh approaches to his music and the cultural forces affecting it.

Joseph Haydn's symphonies and string quartets are staples of the concert repertory, yet many aspects of this founding genius of the Viennese Classical style are only beginning to be explored. From local Kapellmeister to international icon, Haydn achieved success by developing a musical language aimed at both the connoisseurs and amateurs of the emerging musical public. In this volume, the first collection of essays in English devoted to this composer, a group of leading musicologists examines Haydn's works in relation to the aesthetic and cultural crosscurrents of his time. Haydn and His World opens with an examination of the contexts of the composer's late oratorios: James Webster connects the Creation with the sublime--the eighteenth-century term for artistic experience of overwhelming power--and Leon Botstein explores the reception of Haydn's Seasons in terms of the changing views of programmatic music in the nineteenth century. Essays on Haydn's instrumental music include Mary Hunter on London chamber music as models of private and public performance, fortepianist Tom Beghin on rhetorical aspects of the Piano Sonata in D Major, XVI:42, Mark Evan Bonds on the real meaning behind contemporary comparisons of symphonies to the Pindaric ode, and Elaine R. Sisman on Haydn's Shakespeare, Haydn as Shakespeare, and "originality." Finally, Rebecca Green draws on primary sources to place one of Haydn's Goldoni operas at the center of the Eszterháza operatic culture of the 1770s. The book also includes two extensive late-eighteenth-century discussions, translated into English for the first time, of music and musicians in Haydn's milieu, as well as a fascinating reconstruction of the contents of Haydn's library, which shows him fully conversant with the intellectual and artistic trends of the era.