Biography
Naumann ranks among the final German musicians who pursued formal training on Italian soil. He began his studies close to home in Dresden before gaining the chance to journey widely alongside a Swedish violinist. While in Padua he encountered Tartini, who identified the young musician’s gift for writing opera and vocal music. Naumann made his first public mark in Venice by presenting the intermezzo Il tesoro insidiato, after which his professional path opened rapidly. Successes and endorsements from Hasse secured him a post as church composer at the Dresden court; eleven years afterward he rose to Kapellmeister there. He next reformed the Swedish opera, creating the work that became known as the Swedish national opera, Gustaf Wasa, then proceeded to Copenhagen, where he strengthened the Danish opera. In 1786 he received lifetime appointment as Oberkapellmeister in Dresden. Across his career Naumann produced a large body of operas, oratorios, masses, lieder, cantatas, and assorted instrumental pieces. His earliest scores displayed a Neapolitan character marked by pronounced Italian influence together with the styles of Hasse and Martini. In later years he moved away from those models and adopted traits associated with Gluck, incorporating ballets and choruses into most of his operas. The melodic writing of this period became especially prominent and widely admired, while certain march rhythms and echoes of the German Baroque also appeared. Among his operas were Orpheus og Eurydike, Medea, Protesilao, La clemenza di Tito, Solimano, and Aci e Galatea. Naumann followed the contemporary Storm and Stress movement in German literature and incorporated its principles into subsequent compositions through distinctive harmonic shifts, recurring musical motifs, and texts exploring natural phenomena and friendship. His instrumental output, including sonatas and chamber music, reveals a sustained fascination with the glass harmonica invented by Benjamin Franklin, an interest that extended from 1780 until the end of his life.