Haydn concert in rehearsal

I sing in Bart's choir and, this term, we are preparing to perform Haydn's Creation at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 13th April.  I hope some music lovers in Harringay will put this date in their diaries.  The choir needs all the support it can get.  The Creation is an interesting work.  Haydn visited London twice in the 1790s and heard some of Handel's choral works. He started on the Creation from an English text (based on the King James Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost) which was later worked over by a Dutch born Austrian diplomat (Gottfried van Swieten) trying to produce German and English versions that would fit the same music.  It was published in 1800 with both texts but with some peculiarities of rythm and stress in the English version - probably because van Swieten's knowledge of English was not as good as Haydn supposed.  In 1982, a more authentic English version was performed at Westminster Abbey and published by Edition Peters in 1988.  This is the one we are using. Bart's choir is enormous, so my own contribution is insignificant but I still like doing it.