What is The Seasons (Haydn)?
{{italictitle}} [[File:Joseph Haydn.jpg|thumb|300px|Haydn in 1791]] '''''The Seasons''''' (German: ''Die Jahreszeiten'') is an [[oratorio]] by [[Joseph Haydn]]. An oratorio is a long musical work with [[orchestra]], [[choir]] and [[solo (music)|solo]] [[singer]]s. It usually tells a story from the [[Old Testament]] of the [[Bible]]. ''The Seasons'' is different. It is about the four [[season]]s of the [[year]]. It describes [[nature]] and people's [[Interpersonal relationship|relationship]] to nature during the year. ''The Seasons'' was the last big work that Haydn composed. He composed it in [[1801]]. By this time he was the most famous composer in [[Europe]]. [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] had died ten years earlier, and [[Beethoven]] was a young man who was just starting to become famous. Haydn was nearly 80 years old and his health was not good. Although he lived another eight years ''The Seasons'' was the last big work he wrote. Soon after he had composed it he stopped composing altogether. Haydn had only written one big oratorio before ''The Seasons''. This was an oratorio called ''[[The Creation (Haydn)|The Creation]]''. It had been performed in [[1798]] and was very popular all over [[Europe]]. The [[libretto]] (the words) had been written by Baron Gottfried van Swieten who was an [[Austria]]n [[nobleman]] who liked music. He had helped Mozart in his career and now he was helping Haydn. He wanted Haydn to write a second oratorio, so he wrote the libretto for ''The Seasons''. He used a long English poem with the same title by James Thomson ([[1700]]-[[1748]]). He made it much shorter and changed it so that it was suitable to be set to music, and he translated it into [[German language|German]]. Haydn took two years to write the music. It was first performed in [[Vienna]] on 24 April 1801. The audience liked it, although not as much as ''The Creation''. One problem was that Haydn was not very happy about the libretto. He thought that oratorios should be about serious, dramatic stories from the [[Bib