ORAUN, CARL HEINRICH, a German composer of great celebrity , during part of the last century, and kapellmeister, or director of music, to Frederick II. of Prussia, was born in Saxony in 1701. As a boy he was entered at the school of La Sainte Croix, at Dresden, where the beauty of his soprano voice soon procured him the situation of state singer. This voice afterwards changed into a high tenor of no great power, but of excellent quality. He studied composition under Schmidt, kapellmeister at Dresden, and leaving the school in 1720 he commenced composing for the Church. In 1725 he succeeded Hasse as principal tenor in the opera at Brunswick, but not quite approving the airs allotted to him, he wrote one for himself, which so much pleased the court that ho was immediately appointed composer to the opera. Subsequently he entered into the service of the prince royal of Prussia (afterwards Frederick the Great), for whom he composed and sung cantatas, &c. These wero very numerous, and so satisfactory
to the royal dilettante, that Graou's salary was augmented from a small pittance to 2000 crowns per annum. He died in 1759, in the service of Frederick, who was so much attached to him that he wept when the death of his favourite was announced. Grauu was a most voluminous composer, and many of his works perhaps deserved at tho time the encomiums lavished on them; but of these few are known, even in Germany. His operas, which are numerous, are quite for gotten. His short oratorio, 'Der Tod Jesu ' (` The Death of Christ '), possesses very considerable merit ; but his name will be transmitted to posterity by his Te a work of invention, beauty, and grandeur.