Haydn’s Creation and Enlightenment Theology

HAYDN’S TWO GREAT ORATORIOS, The Creation and The Seasons (Die Schöpfung and Die Jahreszeiten) stand as monuments—on either side of the year 1800—to the Enlightenment and to the Austrian Enlightenment in particular. This is not to claim that they have no connection with what would often be considered more “progressive”— broadly speaking, romantic—tendencies. However, like Haydn himself, they are works that, if a choice must be made, one would place firmly in the eighteenth century, “long” or otherwise. The age of musical classicism was far from dead by 1800, likewise the “Age of Enlightenment.” It is quite true that one witnesses in both the emergence of distinct national, even “nationalist,” tendencies. Yet these intimately connected “ages” remain essentially cosmopolitan, especially in the sphere of intellectual history and “high” culture. Haydn’s oratorios not only draw on Austrian tradition; equally important, they are also shaped by broader influence, especially the earlier English Enlightenment, in which the texts of both works have their origins. The following essay considers the theology of The Creation with reference to this background and, to a certain extent, also attempts the reverse, namely, to consider the Austrian Enlightenment in the light of a work more central to its concerns than might have been expected. Composers have always been subject to intellectual influences from without the strictly musical realm, even if this is not an object of inquiry to which great attention has always been devoted. The most cursory comparison of, say, texts set by Bach and those by Haydn would note a difference in intellectual milieu. Music might be thought to present another story. Yet the sin-laden Lutheran world of Bach’s music is so clearly distinct from the Catholic-Enlightenment optimism of Haydn’s that no one could fail to notice the difference. However, it is often with such general observations that historians’ consideration has come to a halt. Norman Hampson, introducing his general history of the Enlightenment, displays refreshing candor in admitting that “whole subjects on which I do not consider myself competent to express an opinion, such as music, painting and architecture, have been excluded.” This is infinitely preferable to pretending that the problem does not exist.