Joseph Martin Kraus
Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), was a German-Swedish composer in the Classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Holy Roman Empire.
His father's family, originally from Augsburg, had a small restaurant in Weilbach near Amorbach, while his mother was a daughter of the master-builder at Miltenberg Johann Martin Schmidt.
His first music teachers were rector Georg Pfister (1730–1807) and cantor Bernhard Franz Wendler (1702–1782), who gave him mainly piano and violin lessons.
There is no way to know for sure whether young Kraus was induced to compose this genre of church music for personal reasons, or whether his choice may have been influenced by his attraction to Sturm und Drang.
As a librettist, Kraus showed a series of scenes that covered the full spectrum of human emotions, from sorrow and fear to joy.
The work corresponds fully to a rhetorical question already raised in Kraus's treatise Etwas von und über Musik: "Should not church music be mostly for the heart?"
During his stay in Göttingen, Kraus had become friendly with a Swedish fellow student, Carl Stridsberg [sv], who persuaded him to accompany him to Stockholm to apply for a position at the court of King Gustav III.
Dizzy with the success, Kraus wrote to his parents: "Immediately after the music ended, the king talked to me for more than a quarter of an hour ... it had simply given him so much satisfaction.
During his journey, Kraus also wrote his famous flute quintet in D Major, VB 188, that broke with all the erstwhile conventions that governed such pieces.
While in Paris, he experienced difficulty with cabals back in Stockholm that sought to prevent his return, but their resolution in 1786 made it possible for him to become the leading figure in Gustavian musical life.
When Kraus returned in 1787, he was appointed as director of curriculum at the Royal Academy of Music, and the next year he succeeded Francesco Uttini as Kapellmästare, eventually attaining a reputation as an innovative conductor, progressive pedagogue, and multi-talented composer.
He also became a member of the literary circle that gathered round the Architect Erik Palmstedt (who was commissioned by King Gustav III to build the first royal opera house), a group that discussed intellectual and cultural life in the Swedish capital.
For the convening of the Riksdag of the Estates in 1789, Gustav III wanted to persuade the parliament to accede to his ongoing war with Russia, where he was opposed by the nobility but supported by the burghers and the peasantry.
There was also an ongoing debate regarding the role music should play in the church, and Kraus participated by writing three articles on the subject in the Stockholms-Posten.
Two different catalogues exist of Kraus's music, one by Karl Schreiber, Verzeichnis der Musikalischen Werke von Jos.
The orchestra Concerto Köln won several prizes for its recordings on period instruments of the complete symphonies of Joseph Martin Kraus.
The minor key and the mood of Symphony VB 142 seem to be reminiscent of Haydn's Sturm und Drang period around 1770, comparable with his earlier minor-key works, although based on the first measures of Gluck's overture to Iphigénie en Aulide.
Many years after Kraus's death, Haydn remarked to a common friend, Swedish diplomat Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe: "The symphony he wrote here in Vienna especially for me will be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries to come; believe me, there are few people who can compose something like that."
The C major Concerto was attributed to Roman Hoffstetter, but both works have been found to be Kraus's compositions and have been recorded professionally by David Aaron Carpenter in 2012.
