Joseph Martin Kraus
oil on canvas (about 1775)
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Joseph Martin Kraus
| 1756-1792Joseph 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. Personal details
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