During his stay in London Haydn sketched an Orfeo which he never completed, as the theatre which ordered it failed before it was finished.  Only fragments of the work remain, and, fortunately enough, these have been engraved in an orchestra score.  These fragments are uneven in value.  The dialogue, or recitative, which should bind them together was lost and so we are unable to judge them fairly.  Among the fragments is a brilliant aria on Eurydice which is rather ridiculous, while another on Eurydice dying is charming.  We also find music for mysterious English horns; it is written as for clarinets in B flat and reaches heights which are impossible for the instrument we now know as the English horn.  There is also a beautiful bass part.  This has been provided with Latin words and is sung in churches.  This aria was assigned to a Creon who does not appear in the other fragments.  One scene shows Eurydice running up and down the banks pursued by demons.  Another depicts the death of Orpheus, killed by the Bacchantes.  This score is a curiosity and nothing more, and a reading causes no regret that the work was not completed.

Like Gluck, Joseph Haydn had the rare advantage of developing constantly.  He did not reach the height of his genius until an age when the finest faculties are, ordinarily, in a decline.  He astounded the musical world with his Creation, in which he displayed a fertility of imagination and a magnificence of orchestral richness that the oratorio had never known before.  Emboldened by his success he wrote the Seasons, a colossal work, the most varied and the most picturesque in the history of ancient or modern music.  In this instance the oratorio is no longer entirely religious.  It gives an audacious picture of nature with realistic touches which are astonishing even now.  There is an artistic imitation of the different sounds in nature, as the rustling of the leaves, the songs of the birds in the woods and on the farm, and the shrill notes of the insects.  Above all that is the translation into music of the profound emotions to which the different aspects of nature give birth, as the freshness of the forests, the stifling heat before a storm, the storm itself, and the wonderful sunset that follows.  Then there is a huntsman’s chorus which strikes an entirely different note.  There are grape harvests, with the mad dances that follow them.  There is the winter, with a poignant introduction which reminds us of pages in Schumann.  But be reassured, the author does not leave us to the rigors of the cold.  He takes us into a farmhouse where the women are spinning and where the peasants are drawn about the fire, listening to a funny tale and laughing immoderately with a gaiety which has never been surpassed.

But this gigantic work does not end without giving us a glimpse of Heaven, for with one grand upward burst of flight, Haydn reaches the realms where Handel and Beethoven preceded him.  He equals them and ends his picture in a dazzling blaze of light.