Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759) - Sinfonia in C

★ Follow music ►   / reciclassicat   Composer: Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759) Work: Sinfonia in C Performers: Concerto Brandenburg Engraving: Robert Sayer (1725-1794) - Gezicht op de voorzijde van het Berliner Stadtschloss te Berlijn (c.1754) Image in high resolution: https://flic.kr/p/2jtn3i1 Painting: Antoine Pesne (1683-1757) - Carl Heinrich Graun with his wife Anna Luise (c.1733) Image in high resolution: https://flic.kr/p/2jtn4tY Further info: https://www.amazon.es/Preussischer-Ba... Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/6EBPLa... --- Carl Heinrich Graun (Wahrenbrück, 1704 - Berlin, 8 August 1759) German composer and singer. Born into a family of musicians, Graun was educated at the Kreuzschule in Dresden in 1714, where he composed his earliest works, sacred compositions, under the tutelage of Johann Zacharias Grundig (1669-1720). In 1718 he matriculated at Leipzig University, where he continued his musical studies with Emanuel Benisch, Johann Christoph Schmidt and Christian Pezold. In 1725 he was employed in Braunschweig as a tenor, and it was there that he composed his earliest opera 'Polydorus'. Further successes led to his coming to the attention of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, into whose musical establishment at the court in Rheinsburg he was admitted in 1735. He remained at the Prussian court after it moved to Berlin when the crown prince became Frederick II, and in 1742 he was appointed Kapellmeister at the opera. Along with colleagues Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Franz Benda, as well as his brother Johann Gottlieb Graun, he was part of the inner intellectual artistic circle that formed around the king, and during the last decade of his life he was known, along with Johann Adolph Hasse, as one of the chief opera seria composers of the period. His inaugural opera for Berlin, 'Cesare e Cleopatre' (1742), can be considered a seminal work in the composition of the Italian opera in German, and his 'Montezuma' (1755), to a text by Frederick II, explores an exotic subject unusual for the period. The same year he collaborated with poet Carl Ramler in writing a new type of Passion titled 'Der Tod Jesu', which only a few years later Johann Adam Hiller stated was an indispensible piece for any music library. It remained the quintessential German Easter oratorio on into the 19th century. The scope of Graun’s compositions has yet to be determined, given that many compositions, particularly chamber works, bear only his last name. This leads to inevitable confusion with his brothers’ works, and there remain issues of proper attribution. He did, however, write 32 operas (mostly opera seria), six Easter oratorios/cantatas, a Te Deum, six cantatas, seven Masses, 15 German sacred cantatas, 32 songs, three symphonies, seven concertos for keyboard, 25 trios (mainly two violins or flutes and basso), and numerous smaller works. The music has been cataloged by Christoph Hewel and is known by GraunWV numbers, further specified as CHG in the catalog itself.