A curious thing happened to English music after the glories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – Byrd, Tallis, Dowland, Purcell and the rest: native talent ran dry, and we became the sluggards of Europe. On the plus side, we took to importing talented foreigners and making them superstars. From the time of Handel onwards, London was the place where they could find fame – and loads of money.

One who found his greatest success here (and a whole new life, as he turned 60) was Joseph Haydn, whose English-inspired oratorio, The Creation of 1798 – about to be performed in an original danced version at Garsington Opera by Ballet Rambert – was his most successful work.

When he first came to London in 1790, Haydn was in an odd position. Europe’s most famous composer had spent his life tucked away mousily on the remote estates of princely employers. Of course he visited Vienna regularly, and the younger Mozart was a good friend, but he was really a provincial countryman, and nothing prepared him for the musical shocks of London.

The biggest, literally, of these were gigantic performances of Handel’s oratorios, Messiah and Israel in Egypt – by up to 1,000 performers – in Westminster Abbey. Haydn was staggered by the grandeur and ambition as well as the variety and detail of Handel’s pieces, and instantly pined to create something similar of national significance, so he was well primed when presented with a libretto based on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Genesis, describing and celebrating the days of Creation.