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In the same letter he remarks that, "as for myself, now an old
man, I hope the critics may not handle my 'Creation' with too
great severity, and be too hard on it. They may perhaps find the
musical orthography faulty in various passages, and perhaps other
things also which I have for so many years been accustomed to
consider as minor points; but the genuine connoisseur will see
the real cause as readily as I do, and will willingly cast aside
such stumbling blocks." It is impossible to miss the significance
of all this.
[At this point in the original book, a facsimile of a letter
regarding "The Creation" takes up the entire next page.]
Certainly it ought to be taken into account in any critical
estimate of "The Creation"; for when a man admits his own
shortcomings it is ungracious, to say the least, for an outsider
to insist upon them. It is obvious at any rate that Haydn
undertook the composition of the oratorio in no light-hearted
spirit. "Never was I so pious," he says, "as when composing 'The
Creation.' I felt myself so penetrated with religious feeling
that before I sat down to the pianoforte I prayed to God with
earnestness that He would enable me to praise Him worthily." In
the lives of the great composers there is only one parallel to
this frame of mind--the religious fervour in which Handel
composed "The Messiah."
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