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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
The Creation is the first large-scale work in musical history to be published with a bilingual text. It is clear from both the nature of the first edition, published by the composer himself, and the manner in which the work was composed, that Haydn intended to give equal standing to the German and English texts. This fact, which has only been fully understood in recent times, adds some complexity to the story of the work's composition.
Authorship
The original text of The Creation was English. No copy of it has been discovered, either in print or in manuscript. Gottfried van Swieten, who translated the libretto into German for Haydn, wrote the following about its origins at the end of December 1798:
My part in the work, which was originally in English, was certainly rather more than mere translation; but it was far from being such that I could regard it as my own. Neither is it by Dryden … but by an unnamed author who had compiled it largely from Milton's Paradise Lost, and had intended it for Handel. What prevented the great man from making use of it is unknown; but when Haydn was in London it was looked out, and handed over to the latter with the request that he should set it to music.
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