Creation: An Invocation of Angels by Brother Franz Joseph Haydn

As in Mozart's The Magic Flute , there is a possible Masonic subtext in The Creation . Like Mozart, Haydn was a Freemason. Freemasonry (another English institution) promoted, among other things, the brotherhood of all men, viewed God as the supreme architect, and prized an enlightened mind. Such ideals persisted in Vienna despite Emperor Francis II's 1795 edict forbidding further lodge meetings. Masonic themes such as a loving admiration for God's newly created world, a high regard for mankind, and the opposition between darkness (Chaos; evil; ignorance) and light (order; good; understanding) -- an element of the Masonic initiation rite -- occur repeatedly in The Creation . Although Haydn never acknowledged a Masonic agenda for the work, many nineteenth-century performances of The Creation were actually benefits for various Masonic lodges

Retrieved on April 26, 2009 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.