Sinfonia in F 'Buffa'

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. Although the date of composition of this highly dramatic work is not known, the style and provenance makes it likely that it was written during Kraus’s earliest student years in Mannheim (1768-1772). The performance history of the “Sinfonia buffa” is also unclear, although it may be suggested that it was performed during a “Musik-Spiel”often given in Mannheim during the Carnival season. The original title of the work, “Sinfonia buffa,” presents an insight into this rather peculiar three-movement Italianate work. It is clear from the content that Kraus intended it to be dramatically conceived, perhaps even as an accompaniment to some sort of pantomime.