Die Schoepfung. Ein Oratorium In Musik gesetzt...The Creation. An Oratorio. [Hob. XXI/2]. [The Creation]. FIRST EDITION

Vienna: T. Mollo. 1799. First edition. Oblong quarto, 129 pp. First edition of “The Creation,” preceding Haydn’s authorized editions of the score by one year, fully engraved. [PN] 120. Text in German. Bound in brown marbled boards with autograph title to front, ownership signature to ffe, printed price lr of title enhanced with contemporary ink, else fine throughout. Hoboken xxi.2, 41. RISM, H4634. Fuld, 271. Weinmann (Mollo), 35.


The first edition of the vocal score of Haydn’s greatest oratorio was this unauthorized publication, predating the composer’s own editions of the full score and the vocal score by one year.


One of the highpoints of the Western musical canon, the Oratorio with a libretto by Gottfried von Swieten, was recognized from its earliest performances as a masterwork of the first order (see New Grove, 8: 346, 347, 358). First performed at the Palais Schwarzenburg in Vienna on April 29th and 30th, 1798, though not performed publicly until the following year, when it was heard at the Burghteater in Vienna on March 19th.


"There is hardly any doubt in the mind of the average music-lover that Haydn's Oratorio The Creation is, tutto sommato, his greatest single accomplishment, and certainly ranks as one of the greatest products of any eighteenth-century mind. It occupies a central position in choral literature and its composition and first performances were the dominant features of Haydn's life in the late 1790s." (Robbins Landon: Haydn Chronicle and Works Vol. IV: Haydn The Years of 'The Creation' 1796-1800, p. 12) (18158)

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