Born in Hartmannsdorf near Kirchberg in Saxony, Graupner received his first musical instruction from his uncle, an organist named Nicolaus Kuester.

In 1705, Graupner left Leipzig to play the harpsichord in the orchestra of the Oper am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg under the direction of Reinhard Keiser, alongside George Frideric Handel, then a young violinist.

His performance was sufficient to secure him the position and three days later the Leipzig council wrote to Graupner's patron (the Landgrave Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt) to request that he be released.

There are about 2,000 surviving works in his catalog, including 113 sinfonias, 85 ouvertures (suites), 44 concertos, 8 operas, 1,418 religious and 24 secular cantatas, 66 sonatas and 57 harpsichord partitas.

As critic David Vernier has summed up, Graupner is "one of those unfortunate victims of fate and circumstance – a contemporary of Bach, Handel, Telemann, etc., who has remained largely – and unfairly – neglected.

"[5] Graupner's music is enjoying a revival, due in large part to the research efforts of many musicologists, performers, and conductors.

[8] In the early 1980s, Myron Rosenblum edited four sinfonias for the massive Barry Brook project The Symphony, 1720-1840: A Comprehensive Collection of Full Scores (New York: Garland, 1979–85), 60 vols.

Montreal harpsichordist Geneviève Soly came across a Graupner manuscript in the Beinecke Library at Yale University in the year 2000 and started performing and recording his works.

"[9] In 2021 Brilliant Classics issued a 14-CD set of Graupner's complete harpsichord music, performed by Fernando De Luca.

In April 2005, a thematic catalog of Graupner's instrumental music (Oswald Bill and Christoph Grosspietsch, editors) was published by Carus-Verlag.

In 2010, Belgian conductor and musicologist Florian Heyerick published an online and searchable digital GWV of the instrumental and vocal works.