I don't know a lot about Joseph Haydn, the great composer, but I did read a newspaper article some years ago (Investors Business Daily, August 31, 1998) that I clipped because I found it instructive and inspiring. The article, by Ben Boychuk, spoke of Haydn's sincere Christian faith and how it inspired his work.
"His faith was so magnetic that it never failed to inspire him... He'd also motivate himself by thinking about what role he and his compositions played in lifting the human spirit.
Near the end of his life, Haydn wrote to some admirers: "Often when my powers of both body and mind were failing and I felt it a hard matter to persevere... a secret feeling within me whispered: There are but few contented and happy men here below; grief and care prevail everywhere; perhaps your labors may one day be source from which the weary and worn... may derive a few moments' rest and refreshment.' What a powerful motive for pressing onward!"
God's creation was an equally important source of creativity. "Out of Haydn's love for the beauties of our world grew the gaiety and affirmative spirit apparent throughout all his creative periods," the biographer Geiringer noted.
"His feeling for nature was deep, far deeper than Mozart's, perhaps even than Beethoven's...
Many of Haydn's observation about nature made their way into his choral masterpiece, 'The Creation.' It was a three-year project, begun after his return to Vienna from London in 1795. He finished it when he was 66 years old. . .
"Never was I so devout as when composing 'The Creation,'" the composer reflected afterward. "I knelt down every day and prayed to God to strengthen me for my work."