Latest completed project:

Shaw vs van Swieten: A comparison of the lyrics in Robert Shaw's take on Haydn's Creation with the original's

Nick Jones notes, in the booklet accompanying Telarc's 2 CD release of Robert Shaw's version of Haydn's Creation (with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus), that the English libretto prepared by Baron van Swieten in parallel with the German version was:

"weak, straining with over-flowery language and convoluted word order to match the poetry of Milton, and van Swieten's command of English was not nearly so good as his German. The resulting English version is often incomprehensible, at times downright ludicrous, speaking, for instance, of the 'flexible' tiger where 'supple' would be a happier choice; in the description of new-created man we find:

The large and arched front sublime
of wisdom deep declares the seat"

Thus, Shaw undertook to come up with a new translation:

"not only to repair the worst lapses of the published libretto, but also 'to unite Haydn's minutely picturesque musical language with the colorful and understandable English text which it deserves'"

Some, purists especially, might take issue with Shaw's rampant and liberal rewriting of the lyrics. It is not the mission of this page to evaluate the relative merits of Shaw's translation and the original, but merely to compare the two translations. I started on this page after failing to find Shaw's lyrics anywhere, and hope that this will be a useful resource for those who seek to compare the two librettos.

The Shaw lyrics are as printed in the booklet accompanying the CDs, and the original lyrics have been taken from a site at random (http://www.geocities.com/thedarkrequiem/bvscreation.html) and edited for spelling. They seem to be the lyrics that the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood used in its 1990 recording of the work; there probably exist no definitive set of lyrics, so if the version below does not concur with the one you might know, I do apologise.

Comments are welcome, at: gabrielseah[at]hotmail[dot]com or with the feedback form.