|
Haydn set to work on "The Creation" with all the ardour of a first
love. Naumann suggests that his high spirits were due to the
"enthusiastic plaudits of the English people," and that the birth
of both "The Creation" and "The Seasons" was "unquestionably owing
to the new man he felt within himself after his visit to England."
There was now, in short, burning within his breast, "a spirit of
conscious strength which he knew not he possessed, or knowing, was
unaware of its true worth." This is somewhat exaggerated. Handel
wrote "The Messiah" in twenty-four days; it took Haydn the best part
of eighteen months to complete "The Creation," from which we may
infer that "the sad laws of time" had not stopped their operation
simply because he had been to London. No doubt, as we have already
more than hinted, he was roused and stimulated by the new scenes
and the unfamiliar modes of life which he saw and experienced in
England. His temporary release from the fetters of official life
had also an exhilarating influence. So much we learn indeed from
himself. Thus, writing from London to Frau von Genzinger, he says:
"Oh, my dear, good lady, how sweet is some degree of liberty! I had
a kind prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base
souls. I often sighed for freedom, and now I have it in some
measure. I am quite sensible of this benefit, though my mind is
burdened with more work. The consciousness of being no longer a
bond-servant sweetens all my toils." If this liberty, this contact
with new people and new forms of existence, had come to Haydn twenty
years earlier, it might have altered the whole current of his
career. But it did not help him much in the actual composition
of "The Creation," which he found rather a tax, alike on his
inspiration and his physical powers. Writing to Breitkopf &
Hartel on June 12, 1799, he says: "The world daily pays me many
compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one could
believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce these,
inasmuch as many a day my feeble memory and the unstrung state of
my nerves so completely crush me to the earth, that I fall into the
most melancholy condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am
incapable of finding one single idea, till at length my heart is
revived by Providence, when I seat myself at the piano and begin
once more to hammer away at it. Then all goes well again, God be
praised!"
|
|
