Haydn's Canvas of Sound

In 1798, at the age of sixty-six, Franz Joseph Haydn began composing what many consider his greatest work — The Creation. The oratorio opens with a hushed, formless orchestral introduction Haydn called "The Representation of Chaos." Strings murmur. Harmonies drift without resolution. The music wanders like a world waiting to be born.

Then comes the choral declaration: "And God said, 'Let there be light!'" At that moment, the full orchestra and chorus explode into a blazing C-major chord. Audiences in Vienna wept at its premiere. Haydn himself, conducting from the keyboard, pointed upward and whispered, "It came from there."

What moved Haydn so deeply was what moves us still when we read Genesis 1. The passage is not a science textbook. It is a hymn — a carefully structured, seven-day poem declaring that the God who speaks is the God who creates. Each day builds on the last. Light, then sky, then land, then living things, each called forth by divine word and pronounced good.

Haydn understood that creation is not cold mechanics. It is art. It is intention. It is the overflow of a Creator who delights in what He makes. When El Shaddai, God Almighty, surveyed the finished work and declared it "very good," it was the satisfaction of an artist who held nothing back.

The same voice that ordered chaos into beauty still speaks over your life today.