CHENNAI: As the standard question of ‘what you want to be when you grow up’ made the rounds, most children I knew speedily scrawled one response: an astronaut. Their ardent reasons ranged from the urge to encounter the cheese-like surface of the moon, zoom through galaxies on a fiery rocket, and discover alien species. This shared curiosity, through centuries, is rooted in how atoms and matter transformed into people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies over 13 billion years ago.
From ancient Greek, Chinese, and Indian ideas of chaos to modern-day visions of particles, scriptures and philosophers across ages have attempted to grasp exact answers to how the universe was created. These stray musings spill into literature, science, films, and philosophy.
In the 1790s, Austrian composer Joseph Haydn crafted his masterpiece, ‘The Creation’, inspired by ideas of The Big Bang, Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Book of Genesis, and an array of questions.
Years later, city-based The Madras Guild of Performing Arts (MGPA) is set to present India’s first full premier of Haydn’s work. The composition depicts the wonders of nature and how the world was created.
“Haydn painted a picture using voices and instruments to bring the chaos, The Big Bang, and technical elements that you’d find scientifically and in any scripture reading across religions. Painting a picture through music and listening to it through song, that’s the beauty of creation,” explains Atul Jacob Issac, director of music at MGPA.
While previous premieres across India have chosen to render excerpts of this piece, MGPA has ambitiously attempted to present it in full. The Oratorio will be performed by a 42-member orchestra from The Gustav Mahler Society of Colombo and three soloists from Britain. This two-hour performance is set to transport audiences to the dawn of time, a world of chaos.
Beginning with the C minor chord, which also features in Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, the orchestra will echo the feelings of creation. The director says the funds from the show will be raised and awarded to CANSTOP.
“We are doing it in true vision of how the piece was composed with the same number of players and since this is a lofty piece, we need an orchestra that can do justice to it, and rehearse it. From a technical point of view, it takes a certain skill to render this piece of music, it takes a lot of understanding,” says Atul.
For the past four years, the symphonies and melodies of this masterpiece have been on Atul’s mind. In a post-pandemic world, as society recovers from sorrow and tragedy, Haydn’s work may be “an apt segue.”
Over the past year, the MGPA and other performers have tweaked and revisited every string and note to present the rendition in full. The event also doubles as an educational opportunity for young musicians, soloists, and accompanists to polish their skills.
The Chennai audience — which has been exposed to a variety of music including Hindustani, Carnatic, and modern tunes — is in for a journey through the cosmos. At the end of the day, MGPA promises a night of passion and love for music, signs off the director.
The premiere is set to be staged on October 5. Tickets for the show at Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall are priced at Rs 2,000, 1,000, and Rs 450. For details, call: 7200808165.