John Hsu, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor of Music, has taught at Cornell for 50 years. To mark the occasion of his retirement from the university, he has chosen to conduct a performance of The Creation by Joseph Haydn, which will take place on Saturday, March 12, at 8:00 PM in Ithaca College's Ford Hall (within the James J. Whalen Center for Music). Prior to the performance which is funded in part by a grant from the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation, James Webster, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Music, will deliver a pre-concert lecture at 7:15 PM; the half-hour talk will take place in the Iger Lecture Hall (Rm. 2105, Whalen Center for Music).

So why The Creation? Probably the most performed oratorio second only to Handel's Messiah, Die Schöpfung ("The Creation") is a masterpiece that Hsu has loved for many years -- especially since 1995 when Oxford University Press published a new performance edition by A. Peter Brown, then professor at the Indiana University School of Music. "In this latest edition, Professor Brown provided much new information about how the piece was performed in Haydn's time, based on original orchestral and vocal parts used for the first performances in Vienna as well as accounts of those performances. What this new edition reveals is a far more descriptive and cohesive work than I had heard in previous performances and imagined in reading other editions of the score," states Professor Hsu.

In order to realize this project, John Hsu needed more than the combined forces of the Chorus and Glee Club. The 53-piece "Creation Festival Orchestra" is comprised of players from the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Syracuse Symphony, Binghamton Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, and other professionals in the upstate area. The soloists, representing three Archangels, actually tell the story: soprano Judith Kellock of the Cornell faculty as Gabriel, tenor David Parks of the Ithaca College faculty as Uriel, and baritone Richard Lalli from Yale University as Raphael. In Part III of this production, the baritone and soprano will assume the roles of Adam and Eve.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) composed The Creation late in his career, between 1796 and 1798. The story of the Creation as told in his oratorio is adapted primarily from three sources: Book I of Genesis; Milton's Paradise Lost; and the Book of Psalms. According to James Webster, "Its overall structure is strong and clear. It falls into three Parts; Parts I and II are based on the biblical six days of creation, while the somewhat shorter Part III describes Adam and Eve in Paradise." Instead of pointing out or praising the myriad beauties and genius of The Creation, Webster wishes to make three general points: "First, the 'Representation of Chaos' at the beginning does not stand alone; it can be understood only through the blazing Creation of Light to which it leads and which resolves and grounds its disjunction and mystery." Second, the work is "full of marvelous examples of 'word-painting': the analogical or associative musical illustration of ideas and concepts in the text." And, lastly, that the work "can also be understood as a creation of the cultural politics of its day. . . . The Creation is a quintessential late-Enlightenment work, which originated in a conservative but optimistic context of belief in rational understanding and human progress."

Admission to the concert is $15, with student tickets at $8 (reserved seating). Tickets may be purchased through the Ticket Center at Clinton House in person or by phone (607/273-4497), at the Willard Straight Hall Ticket Office (in person only), or on line through IthacaEvents.com.

A member of the Cornell music faculty since 1955, John Hsu has taught lessons in cello and viola da gamba, and courses in music theory, music history and performance, and has conducted the Cornell Collegium Musicum, the Cornell Chamber Orchestra, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, and the Sage Chapel Choir. He is artistic director emeritus of the Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities, founder of the Apollo Ensemble (a period-instrument chamber orchestra), and a world-renown player of the viola da gamba and baryton. As instrumentalist and conductor, he has recorded award-winning CDs and toured throughout this country and Europe. In May 2000, the government of France and its Ministry of Culture bestowed the high honor of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on conductor John Hsu for his extensive research on the music of French composer Marin Marais. Hsu looks forward with great anticipation to the musical collaboration culminating in the March 12 performance, when he hopes that he and his forces "will discover and realize a truly dramatic and imaginative Creation."