The Seasons (Haydn) Heartz, writing near the end of a massive three-volume account of the Classical era, writes "The Hunting and Drinking choruses first led me to study Haydn's music more extensively beginning some forty years ago ... no music has elated me more in old age than "The Seasons"." Michael Steinberg writes that the work "ensure[s] Haydn's premiere place with Titian, Michelangelo and Turner, Mann and Goethe, Verdi and Stravinsky, as one of the rare artists to whom old age brings the gift of ever bolder invention." Opinions vary as to the nature of the relationship between "The Creation" and "The Seasons"
The Seasons (Haydn) was based on extracts from the long English poem "The Seasons" by James Thomson (1700–1748), which had been published in 1730. Whereas in "The Creation" Swieten was able to limit himself to rendering an existing (anonymous) libretto into German, for "The Seasons" he had a much more demanding task. Olleson writes, "Even when Thomson's images were retained, they required abbreviation and adaptation to such an extent that usually no more than faint echoes of them can be discerned, and the libretto often loses all touch with the poem which was its starting point. Increasingly during the course of the oratorio,