First Parish Bedford UU

On Sunday May 3, 2009, the  adult  choir  will  present  excerpts  from Franz  Joseph Haydn’s  ‘Creation’ with  soloists and instrumentalists.” One of the reasons that  “Creation”  is  so  appropriate  is  because this  is  200th  anniversary  of Haydn’s  death.

Franz  Joseph  Haydn  was  an  Austrian  composer whose  innovative  ideas  revolutionized western  music.  He  wrote  multiple  masterpieces  in  every  genre  –  symphonies,  choral works,  vocal  works,  and  chamber  music. Wolfgang  Amadè  Mozart  respected  Haydn so much  that he and Haydn were  constantly exchanging  ideas.  To  express  the  respect they had for one another, each wrote a set of string  quartets  dedicated  to  the  other. Ludwig  van  Beethoven  took  lessons  from Haydn, and, while Beethoven found Haydn’s teaching  methods  a  bit  old-fashioned,  he used  some  of  Haydn’s  compositional  ideas to  create  some  of  his  best  known  master pieces.

John Milton  (1608-1674). Milton was  a poet,  author, polemicist and civil  servant  to  the government of England during  the  Commonwealth. Why  even  talk  about  Milton? While  Haydn  certainly  references  many  passages  from the bible  for “The Creation”,  the  text  is  in no  small part based on  the  text  from Milton’s  “Paradise Lost”  (1667). In  case  you’ve  not  read  “Paradise  Lost”  (after  all,  it  IS ten books  long!),  it’s  a poetic  text,  typical of  its  time  in both  use  of  language  and  its  perception  of  the  creation story. What inspired Haydn to set some of the text was he felt  it  wasn’t  an  academic  view  of  the  creation  story, unlike  the  bible. Many  of  the  images  in  both  “Paradise Lost”  and  its  sequel  “Paradise Regained”  (1671)  seem  a bit  naïve  by  today’s  scientific  standards,  but,  whatever the case, the story and text inspired an incredible masterpiece.