A poem for the New Year

In the beginning, Music …

At the 1799 first public performance of Haydn’s Creation in Vienna, the Overture, the first recitative and Chorus were all written around the sombre key of C minor.  The following section with its unexpectedly bold opening fortissimo chord of C major, marking the creation of Light, so electrified the Viennese audience that, for some minutes, the orchestra was unable to move on to the Introduction to the first Tenor aria.

In the perpetual stygean darkness

of a desolate void and turbulent gloom. 

Haydn heard dark chords empty and disparate,

cadences disappeared like hope before dawn.

Chaos reigned, sad lonely monarch of nothing,

faithless and sinister, faceless and threatening,

cloaked in a mantle of grey shadows and fear.

But the Spirit of God moved a new dawning,

lichen and mosses unfurled their drab beauty

quietly chanting their first sunrise hymn,

singing clouds sailed stately over blue waters,

and breezes blew through the stems of tall reeds

like far distant oboes announcing the news

that Creation’s Odyssey was now begun.

Following the music the journey continues

as trumpets of flowers call us to prayer,

the meandering stream’s soft ostinato

offers its song to the still summer evening,

and fluting owls in the cool gathering dusk 

sing praises and psalms once heard in a garden,

reflections of Paradise from the deep night. 

God’s were the melodies sung by Creation,

stars in the night sky his sweet psalteries of gold,

and carolling birds his immutable choir.

’Twas Love first struck the great Chord of C major,

but the genius of Haydn echoed its sound

opening our eyes to a glory unending,

revealed to us all in that vast burst of light.

                                                                     Naomi