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|  | Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792)
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works by Joseph Martin Kraus at Carus
Joseph Martin Kraus was one of the most musically original contemporaries of
Mozart. He was born in the same year as this famous classicist from Vienna and
survived him by only one year. Other than this almost chronological coincidence
these two composers share neither stylistic nor biographical traits. Born in
1756 in Miltenberg am Main, Kraus studied law in Mainz, Erfurt and Göttingen
with the goal of becoming a civil servant in the service of the Elector of Mainz.
Kraus already made his initial attempts at composition during his studies at
the grammar school in Mannheim, and during an interruption of his studies the
twenty-year-old composed church music at Buchen in the Odenwald. His father
had been transferred to this town soon after Kraus was born. During his studies
in Göttingen the time appeared rife for him to devote his life completely to
music.
A fellow student from Sweden persuaded Kraus in 1778 to move to Stockholm. After
three years of hardship and privation, the success of his first opera, "Proserpine"
led King Gustav III, an art enthusiast, to appoint him as Royal Music Director
of the Swedish Court. This appointment was linked with the obbligation to study
both musical theater and the conditions for receiving musical training in the
most important centers of Europe. One of the most important stops for Kraus,
as a composer, on his four-year journey (autumn 1782 through 1786) was in Vienna,
where he sought out Gluck, Haydn, Albrechtsberger and Salieri, but apparently
he did not visit Mozart, which says a great deal about his musical orientation.
An enormous amount of work awaited Joseph Martin Kraus upon is return to Sweden.
His most important task was to reorganize music and theater at the Court and
to compose and perform his own works. His patron, Gustav III, was assassinated
in March 1792 (Verdi used this incident as the plot of his opera "The Masked
Ball"); a few months later, on 15 December 1792, Joseph Martin Kraus died of
tuberculosis at the height of his creative powers.
In addition to his early sacred works, the compositional output of Joseph Martin
Kraus encompasses operas, stage and ballet music, Lieder, arias and cantatas with
German, Swedish, Italian and French texts, symphonies and chamber music.
First volume of the critical edition
Vol. VI/1: „Chamber Music I“
10 String quartets; Sonata for flute and viola; Quintet for flute, 2 violins, viola and violoncello
Edited by Sonja Gerlach
Carus 50.601 149.00 €
The first volume of the new scholarly edition contains the complete chamber music without a keyboard instrument. The most important group of works comprises the string quartets, 10 of which have survived. They were composed during the 1770s, when Haydn was developing this class of music. The differing balance between such contrasting musical elements as entries in imitation, courtly melody, swift changes of tempo and unexpected modulations gives each of the quartets its special charm. The fact that six of them were published in 1784 as Kraus's "Opus 1" by the publisher J. J. Hummel shows that the composer himself was convinced by his quartets. With the Flute quintet this volume also contains another key work in Kraus's chamber music. Composed in Vienna about 1783 and also issued in manuscript copies, this work was printed by Ignaz Pleyel in Paris in 1799.
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