Riksdagsmarsch

Though Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) became the most influential Swedish musician of the 18th century, he was born and educated in Germany and lived only eight years in Stockholm before his early death at the age of 36. Yet in that brief period he had taught composers and created the Swedish school of opera. Kraus had a lifelong fascination with drama and unsurprisingly his symphonies are full of unexpected twists and turns and contain many forward-looking stylistic devices that anticipate music of the next century. This march was composed as part of the incidental music for the convening of the Swedish parliament in March of 1789. The Riksdagsmarsch is an unusual work, in that it is a revision of a march composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1781 for his opera Idomeneo. It is not known how Kraus got a hold of his model, for Mozart’s opera was all but unknown. During April-June 1783, however, both Kraus and Mozart lived in Vienna practically around the corner from each other on the Kohlmarkt, and some sort of personal contact was the most probable source of this march. Kraus’s decision to rework Mozart’s march instead of composing a new piece himself can only be understood in terms of symbolism. In the opera, King Idomeneo returns triumphantly to Crete after a long and ultimately victorious war with Troy to the jubilation of his people. Gustav’s own propaganda about his military victories over Russia, his support of the local populace, and the patriotic paternalistic sentiment fits the march well. Kraus’s reworking of the march is substantial and considerably strengthens the power of the piece.