The saddest symphony of all the classical era to me. J. M. Kraus managed to pass down the pain of having lost his protector into his music, for us to feel it.
Was für grandiose Musik! Ich bin zutiefst berührt und gleichzeitig begeistert! Wer braicht die Mauerische Trauermusik? Das ist hier Musik, die wirklich zu Herzen geht .
Its two almost exactly contemporary composers writing music for a similar circumstance so that probably explains the common features. That said, Kraus did know some other Mozart works. Its unlikely that Kraus would have known Mozart’s K477 (written in 1785), and he missed meeting him in person when he was in Vienna from April to October 1783; Kraus did go off to Eszterhaza to visit Haydn rather than wait for Mozart’s return from Salzburg and Linz in the October of that year.
J. Martin Krauss is one of a handful of above average composers in the Masonic circles of Mozart (‘Beneficence’ = zur Wohltaetigkeit) c. 1785 that have been grossly under represented on modern concert stages especially if his ‘Masonic Funeral Music Sinfonia’ is anything to go by (it quotes the chromatic ascending baseline of Mozart’s own Masonic Funeral Music of July 1785 K.477-Krauss was a friend of both Haydn & Albrechtsberger during his stint in Vienna (1784-1787) & his music is not only intelligently written, it is also daringly forward looking in terms of Romantic leanings (he was born 6 months after Mozart in 1756 & died a year later than Mozart in 1792-yet another sad loss for the musical world …
