Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759)
- Ouverture 'Cesare e Cleopatra' (1742)
Performers: Orfеus Barock; Francesco Cοrtі (conductor)
Further info: Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759) - Sinfonia in C
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German composer and singer. Born into a family of musicians, his
brothers August Friedrich Graun (c.1698-1765) and Johann Gottlieb Graun
(1702-1771) were also musicians and composers. Carl Heinrich 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. 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.
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