Georg Andreas Kraft

Georg Andreas Kraft (* around 1660 in Nuremberg ; † December 1, 1726 in Kaster ) (also Crafft, von Crafft, Krafft, etc.) was a German baroque composer .

Kraft has been demonstrable in Düsseldorf since 1679 . The Palatinate-Neuburg Hereditary Prince Johann Wilhelm sent the young Kraft to Corelli in Rome for further musical training . As concertmaster , Kraft played a key role in the expansion of the Electoral Palatinate Chapel in Düsseldorf . With the Kapellmeister Sebastiano Moratelli (1640–1706) and especially with Johann Hugo von Wilderer he was a close friendship, which in both cases also found expression in musical creativity. Before 1700 Kraft became Vogt employed in caste, shortly afterwards appointed court chamber councilor. His first marriage was to Anna Maria Müller from Düsseldorf. His second wife, Johanna Margaretha, was the daughter of the Palatinate War Commissioner Peter Dietrich von Schönebeck. She bore him twelve children. His son Sebastian Johannes (* 1692) succeeded his father as Vogt zu Kaster in 1722. In 1711 the concert master Crafft moved with the Electoral Palatinate chapel for the coronation of Charles VI. to Frankfurt am Main . In 1713 he was no longer involved in Wilderer's opera Amalasunta ; evidently he had broken away from his compositional obligations. He also resigned from the position of concertmaster. When, after the death of Johann Wilhelm in 1716, a large number of the Düsseldorf musicians followed their new Prince Karl Philipp to Heidelberg and Mannheim , Kraft remained in Kaster to spend his old age here.

His works include overtures and ballets for opera performances in Düsseldorf as well as a chamber sonata - which cannot be traced today - that was printed in Amsterdam by Estienne Roger in 1714 . As concertmaster of the Electoral Palatinate Orchestra, Kraft is at the beginning of the series that leads to Johann Stamitz via Gottfried Finger and the lutenist Johann Sigismund Weiss (1690–1737, brother of Silvius Leopold Weiss ) . The Italian librettist Giorgio Maria Rapparini , who can be traced back to Düsseldorf around 1685–1716, puts the composer Kraft on the same level as Poacher.

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• Music in the past and present , vol. 7.
• Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Vol. 10.