Sinfonia in D 'Riksdagssymfoni'

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. This work was composed as part of the incidental music for the convening of the Swedish parliament in March of 1789. In order to set the tone for this momentous occasion, Kraus chose an older form that could display the pomp, majesty, and, hopefully, the triumph of the monarch, as well as contain allusions to royal music of the political powers of Europe. The work is a sinfonia da chiesa, the sacred equivalent of the old-fashioned French overture. It consists of a single, large-scale movement; a lengthy, fluid, lyrical introduction in a slower tempo followed by a powerful sonata-form fugue whose dramatic orchestration anticipates the style of Beethoven.