Haydn: Die Schöpfung - The Creation
Haydn confessed that “as he worked on The Creation, he had felt an extraordinary religious fervour.” However, this work was also inspired by the spirituality of the Viennese Masonic lodges of his day: “it is above all the first secular oratorio, in the sense that its message is addressed to all mankind, exactly like The Magic Flute, in operatic terms, and well before the Finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.”