Kraus, Joseph Martin (1756-1792)

Though Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) became the most influential Swedish musician of the 18th century, he was born and educated in Germany and lived only eight years in Stockholm before his early death at the age of 36. Yet in that brief period he had taught composers and created the Swedish school of opera. Kraus had a lifelong fascination with drama and unsurprisingly his symphonies are full of unexpected twists and turns and contain many forward-looking stylistic devices that anticipate music of the next century. The Sinfonia in C minor (VB 142) can be considered Krauss most popular work; it has remained more or less in the repertory since its inception. All three movements of this powerful Sturm und Drang work are based on the Sinfonia in C minor (VB 140), composed a couple of years earlier. It begins with the same homage to Glucks Iphigenie en Aulide overture, and both the second and final movements (the models rather quirky minuetto al rovescio is omitted from this revision) are all based on the same principal themes, transposed from the tonally obscure key of c minor to the more common c minor. With the exception of the last movement, however, substantial changes have been made, so that this work is essentially longer and larger than the model from which it sprang. Allan Badley