The Picturesque Oratorio: Haydn’s Art in Nature’s Clothing

Joseph Haydn’s two late oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, have had contrasting receptions. Both works were repeatedly performed to great acclaim in the few years after their inception, but it was the latter work that suffered most from a critical backlash that expressed disquiet at its frequent recourse to tone-painting. These negative reactions continue to resound, resulting in a relative scarcity of modern-day performances compared to its predecessor and a surprising scholarly indifference among today’s musicologists. The recent turn in cultural history towards the aesthetics of the picturesque, however, enables The Seasons to be contextualized afresh as a product of the English picturesque movement. The essay examines Gottfried van Swieten’s and Haydn’s debt to, and keen interest in, the English theory and practice of the picturesque. Through a close reading of James Thomson’s titular epic and the many elements of the poem that survive in Gottfried van Swieten’s libretto, the work’s origins are traced back to the Georgian culture of ‘looking at’, ‘evaluating’, and ‘relishing’ scenes from natural landscapes.