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Die Schopfung: Oratorium fur Solostimmen, Chor und Orchester, Hob.(Joseph Haydn's Die Schopfung (The Creation) )

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Joseph Haydn. Die Schopfung: Oratorium fur Solostimmen, Chor und Orchester, Hob. XXI: 2. Neuausgabe nach den Quellen von Klaus Burmeister. Full score. Frankfurt am Main: C. F. Peters, c2003. [Pref. in Ger., Eng., p. iv-xi; orchestration, 1 p.; score, 324 p.; Revisionsbericht, p. 325-39. ISMN M-014-10620-1; Edition Peters no. 8997; pl. no. 32241. [euro]56.]

Joseph Haydn. Die Schopfung: Oratorium fur Solostimmen, Chor und Orchester, Hob. XXI: 2. Neuausgabe von Klaus Burmeister. Piano reduction by the editor based on the piano reduction by August Eberhard Muller (1800) authorized by Haydn. Frankfurt am Main: C. F. Peters, c2002. [Orchestration, 1 p.; vocal score, 217 p.; afterword in Ger., Eng., 6 p. ISMN M-014-10602-7; Edition Peters no. 8998; pl. no. 32234. [euro]11.80.]

"The work is to appear ... in full score, so that on the one hand, the public may have the work in its entirety, and so that the connoisseur may see it in toto and thus better judge it; while on the other, it will be easier to prepare the parts, should one wish to perform the work anywhere." (Translation from H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle & Works, vol. 4, Haydn: The Years of "The Creation" 1796-1800 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977; reprint, London: Thames & Hudson, 1994], 471.)

So read the announcement Haydn placed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in June of 1799 to attract subscribers for his own edition of Die Schopfung (The Creation). Viennese audiences had recently witnessed the private premiere of the oratorio on 30 April 1798, and the first public performance on 19 March 1799 at the Burg-theater with approximately 180 musicians conducted by Haydn. The composer was now ready to offer his work to an even wider audience with his self-published German and English edition issued in Vienna in late February 1800.

As the advertisement demonstrates, Haydn planned his edition for the public and the connoisseur, and only secondarily for the performer, as parts were not issued with the first edition. A. Peter Brown (Performing Haydn's The Creation: Reconstructing the Earliest Renditions [Bloomington: Indiana...