Sinfonia Buffa in F Major - Josef Martin Kraus (1756 - 1792)

Kraus was lauded by his contemporaries Joseph Haydn and Gluck as an ‘original genius’. A talented composer, a prolific correspondent, and published author who during his youth produced a volume of poetry and one of the few music aesthetical treatises that can be associated with the literary Sturm und Drang movement.

After two years of study at the University of Göttingen, Kraus accepted a proposition to travel to Sweden in order to focus his career on music at the court of Gustav III. He spent two years of relative hardship attempting to break into the Stockholm musical establishment. A commission for an opera, Proserpin, whose text was drafted by the King himself, won him the post as Deputy Musical Director in 1781.

The following year he was sent on a grand tour by Gustav in order to observe the latest trends in music theatre in continental Europe. This lasted four years and brought him into contact with major figures such as Haydn, Gluck, Antonio Salieri, Padre Martini, and others. Kraus’ travels also took him throughout Germany, Italy, France, and England, where he witnessed the Handel Centenary celebrations in 1785.

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. In 1787 he was appointed as director of curriculum at the Royal Academy of Music, and the next year he succeeded Francesco Antonio Uttini as Kapellmästare, eventually attaining a reputation as an innovative conductor, progressive pedagogue, and multi-talented composer.

Although he was a much sought after composer for stage music, his principal opera, Æneas i Cartago, remained unperformed during his lifetime. In January of 1792 he was present at the masked ball wherein his patron, Gustav III, was assassinated, causing considerable turmoil in the cultural establishment that the monarch had nurtured. His own health deteriorated shortly thereafter, and he died only a few months later in December of 1792 from tuberculosis. He was buried in the Stockholm suburb of Tivoli following a ceremony where his coffin was carried across the ice of the Brunsviken by torchlight.

The buffa was probably composed during Kraus’ early years at Mannheim. It is a typical three-movement Italian sinfonia with a title that reflects the dramatic content of the entire work. Effectively a miniature pantomime, the opening movement has starkly contrasting scenes with sudden outbursts of emotion followed by melodies that trail into silence. The energy of the first movement, followed by the changes of key from major to minor in the second give a strong flavour of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ movement in works by Kraus' German contemporaries.

(Notes reproduced by kind courtesy of leading Kraus scholar Dr. Bertil Van Boer.)

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