PROGRAMME NOTES

Welcome to our gala performance this evening, and thank you for joining us in celebrating YST’s very own creation with Franz Joseph Haydn’s masterwork of the same name! As we explore this wonderful oratorio, we will look at the many threads which came together at just the right time to make a reality. Likewise, tonight is also about recognising the many threads that came together to bring this conservatory into existence, and encouraging those here now, and who will come later, to contribute their own unique threads as we move forward.

masterpiece, turned to larger-scale religious works such as masses and oratorios late in life. Within a few years of premiering, it became the most celebrated and performed oratorio in Europe, and Haydn himself considered it to be his highest achievement in vocal music. ‘Papa Haydn’ (b.

of the Baroque period, was teacher to Beethoven, friend to Mozart, and lived through nearly Enlightenment. His deep understanding of Baroque music, choral traditions, symphonic style, chamber music and opera are all apparent in the music we have before us tonight.

certainly true of the genesis of . After spending many years at the Esterházy celebrated in the musical life of the city, mingled among society’s elite, attended and performed at concerts, and was exposed to all things English. This included the remarkable oratorio tradition as represented by Handel and his immensely popular Messiah. Performances of this work were typically grand spectacles with hundreds of performers held in secular venues such as theatres and schools. These performances made a deep impression on Haydn, who expressed his language.

intended more as ‘theatrical’ works and usually presented in periods of the church year (Lent Handel’s more famous oratorios (his arrangement of “All we like sheep” from Handel’s Messiah is a real treat to the ears with its humorous use of bassoons and clarinets imitating sheep bringing with him the original English libretto of that had been presented to him by his friend and key to London society, Johann Peter Salomon.

The author of this libretto remains unknown, but what we do know is that the work was compiled from Milton’s Paradise Lost and had been offered to Handel as a subject for Haydn also hoped to present a convincing English version so as to gain recognition in the