Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), was a composer, occasionally known as "the Swedish Mozart".

Kraus was innate witharound Mittelberg am Main in Germany, & began his education inside Buchen am Odenwald, afterwards at a Jesuit Gymnasium and Music Seminar at Mannheim, then proceeded to survey law around Mainz, Erfurt (in which he was taught by Peter Weimar) and Göttingen, in which he was section of the writer's class action Göttingen Hainbund & wrote the book of poetry, Versuch von Schäfersgedichte, the tragedy, Tolon, too when music, including a cantata Die Geburt Jesu & Der Tod Jesu, & the musical treatise "Etwas von und über Musik fürs Jahr 1777".

At the Swedish Court
Around 1778 Kraus moved to Stockholm, Sweden, on the suggestion of his friend Carl Stridsberg. His fiscal situation there was bad ab initio. His opera Azire was rejected per Royal Swedish Academy of Music, but a Academy decided to give him another risk. King Gustav III of Sweden himself drafted the opera libretto Proserpina & Johan Kellgren versified it. Kraus's music to this libretto was with success premiered at Ulriksdal Palace. Around 1781 Kraus was appointed the conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera and director of the Royal Academy of Music.

Gustavus III sent Kraus in the Quintuplet-month Grand Tour of Europe to view 100% he can astir music overseas. On this hike, Kraus met Christoph Willibald Gluck and Joseph Haydn, for whom he wrote a Symphony inside Five hundred major, VB 143 for Haydn to play at Esterhaza, & it was 1st published under Haydn's title. Kraus's Symphony within E tyke, VB 141 was foremost published within Paris in 1787, under the title of Giuseppe Cambini, a super popular composer at a period. When you took this period, Kraus became the member of the equivalent masonic lodge as Mozart.

A great deal of Kraus's symphonies stand been misused, or even attributed to more composers. Lone just about the twelve remain of which scholars come certain of Kraus's authorship. Virtually all of Kraus's extant symphonies come inside triplet movements, while forgoing the Minuet. Virtually all come scored for 2 horns & strings, numbers of include ii flutes & 2 hautbois, when a late ones besides include ii bassoons, & deuce extra horns. A musicologist Bertil van Boer identifies Kraus's Symphony inside C# minor when "one of only two symphonies in this key written during the eighteenth century." It was late reworked inside the extra 'doable' key when Symphony inside Hundred shaver, VB 142.

Whenever Kraus returned from either his Grand Tour, he was appointed conductor (Kapellmästare) inside Gustavus III's court, & became taking part in the Palmstedt writer's class action. For the convention of the Riksdag of the Estates in 1789, Gustavus III wanted to convince the parliament to last along by having his plans of running to war with Russia, where he was opposed per noble estate but supported by a burghers & the peasantry. A king got Kraus write Riksdagsmusiken for this occasion, consisting of a march according to a March of the Priests from either Mozart's Idomeneo, & the symphony. A legislative approved a king's measures. That season Kraus as well gave the Swedish premiere of a Mozart symphony.

Legacy
Bertil van Boer divides Kraus's sacred music into deuce periods. A number 1, from either 1768 to 1777, is Kraus's music written as a Roman Catholic for Catholic services. For the 2nd, from either 1778 to 1790, Kraus was however Catholic, however wrote music for Lutheran services. Aside from either short anthem & choral, there was non tremendously have for sacred music inside Sweden at that period. There was too a debate running in on the role music should play in the church, & Kraus participated in this debate by writing trey articles on the subject in the newspaper Stockholms Post.

For the staging inside January 1792 of Voltaire's Olympie, Kraus wrote an overture, a march & interludes. In March 1792, Gustavus III attended the masked ball in which he was assassinated, & he died shortly when. (Giuseppe Verdi started to write an opera on this event, Gustavus Terzo, but late changed a list of a characters, a setting, & the title of the opera, to Un Ballo in Maschera). Kraus wrote a funeral oratorio & the Symphonie funèbre which were played at a burial ceremony in April 13. Kraus himself died two or three months late, of tuberculosis.

2 different catalogs survive of Kraus's music, 1 by Karl Scheiber, Verzeichnis 500 Musikalischen Werke von Jos. Kraus, which gives both composition an The total, & Bertil van Boer's Die Werke von Joseph Martin Kraus: Systematisch-thematisches Werkverzeichnis, which gives every composition the VB total. Bertil van Boer likewise edited modern editions, in Artaria, of everthing Kraus's symphonies recorded in Volume Quaternion of Naxos's complete placed of Kraus symphonies, & besides wrote a programme notes for people discs also when a article in Kraus in the Just released Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians. Volume One won a Cannes Classical Award inside 1999, when Volume Two contains globe premiere recordings of terzetto of Kraus's symphonies.