Haydn – ​ The Creat i o n 189

this decision in several journals, including the June 1799 edition of the Leipzig
Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung.

The work is to appear, neatly and correctly engraved and printed on good paper,
with German and English texts, and 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 it anywhere.

This score was issued in February 1800, with English words above the vocal
lines and German words below, and then offered to the publishers Breitkopf &
Härtel, who began selling the work in 1803. A subsequent edition by Breitkopf &
Härtel, edited by Eusebius Mandyczewski, was published in 1922 as part of the
Haydn Gesamtausgabe. Mandyczewski, conductor of the Vienna Singakademie
and later librarian and archivist for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, made
some corrections to the previous edition and limited the new edition to
German text only. Yet later, in 1989, Breitkopf & Härtel published the orato-
rio with German, English, and French texts. Other German editions have also
been published, including those by C. F. Peters in 1871 and 2003, Eulenberg in
1907, Bärenreiter (in association with G. Henle) in 2008, and Carus-​Verlag in
2011. Both the Bärenreiter and Carus scores, edited respectively by Annette
Oppermann and Wolfgang Gersthofer, are based on Haydn’s original 1800
score and contain extensive historical notes; they also include both German and
English texts (the English being from van Swieten’s original libretto). British
publications include various versions by Novello, first published in 1847 with a
revised English text, and in 1991 by Oxford University Press, edited by A. Peter
Brown, with both German and van Swieten’s original English.
The basic differences between the various editions deal with the English text
and the numbering of movements. From shortly after the oratorio’s first publi-
cation until the end of the twentieth century, it was presumed that van Swieten
translated the English to German for Haydn and then re-​translated it back to
English so that the English would fit the German syllabification. Since some of
the English syllabification and wording was awkward, editors (from Haydn’s
student Sigismond Neukomm to twentieth-​century conductor Robert Shaw)
felt that the text could be improved. For example, in the 1847 Novello edition,
the phrase “By loads of fruit th’ expanded boughs are press’d” in Gabriel’s aria
“With verdure clad” was changed to “With copious fruit th’ expanded boughs
are hung.” The change doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement.
Current research—​based on comparisons between van Swieten’s libretto, the
wordbook used for early nineteenth-​century performances, and Milton’s Paradise
Lost—​has found that van Swieten basically kept to the original English. In addi-
tion, primary source materials have revealed that van Swieten had a significant