Kraus, Joseph Martin: Additional Movements for Gluck's Armide (VB 39) (AE279)

Kraus, Joseph Martin (1756-1792)

This score is based upon several sources. The first movement was included by Kraus collector Fredrik Silverstolpe in his "complete" works edition dating from about 1804. This source is now at the University Library in Uppsala under signature Instrumental music in manuscript Capsula 36. Silverstolpe knew of this particular movement but was unable to copy out a complete score; the second violin and viola parts are missing from the second half of the movement. Recent research into the set of authentic parts (Stockholm, Operansbibliotek Operor A 8) has recovered the missing lines, apparently overlooked by the copyist. The second movement was discovered in the accompanying score to the opera (same signature).Written with apparent haste, the autograph was tipped in to the larger volume by Kraus, perhaps as a last minute addition.

For the first movement, Silverstolpe's score and the authentic parts agree in precise detail, a testament to that copyist's attention to detail. The score order of the winds follows current practice, although in the first movement of the original source the oboes and clarinets are combined. In the second movement the arrangement of the two pairs of horns follows the common eighteenth century practice whereby the first and second horns are pitched in the higher key and the third and fourth in the lower.As is usual with Kraus's music the dynamic and articulation markings are given consistently and accurately. Additions or cautionary markings have been given in brackets; redundant cautionary accidentals have been eliminated according to modern standard practice. Inconsistencies in the slurring within the sources have been regularized according to parallel passages or other instrumental part doublings in the second movement. Appogiature havebeen reproduced as they appear in the original; in performance practice, however, they should probably be performed as gracenotes. It is up to the performer's discretion as to whether to add a trill in the first and second violin parts on the first beat of bar 30. Bertil van Boer