JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF

[Fleuron]JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF

[Fleuron]

JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF

Joseph Joachim Raff, was the son of an organist and teacher, Franz Joseph Raff, who early in 1822 left the little Würtemberg city of Weisenstetter in the Horb district of the Black Forest to settle in Lachen on the lake of Zurich in the canton Schwyz. Here on May 27 of the same year the boy was born. In his early childhood he displayed that mental ability which does not always fulfill its promise in years of maturity. He was able to translate Homer at the age of seven and generally preferred books to rude outdoor sports. He displayed musical tendencies, too, learning to play the organ and to sing in the choir; but no special attention was given to his musical training, probably because his facility in this art was regarded as only an evidence of his general activity of mind. He was first put to school at the Würtemberg Institute, and after a thorough preparation there, was sent to the Schwyz Jesuit Lyceum. He was graduated with distinction, carrying off prizes in Latin and mathematics, but his means were not sufficient to enable him to take a university course. He obtained the post of tutor of Latin at St. Gallen, where he remained a short time, afterward going as a teacher to Rapperswyl. He was at this time hardly twenty years of age. He now began his study of music, for which his fondness had been growing. He was unable to afford a teacher, but he diligently practised at the piano and made many earnest attempts at composition.

The patron saint of musical Germany in 1842 was Mendelssohn and in August of that year he set off on one of his tours in Switzerland. No date is recorded, but we may be sure that Raff seized upon this visit as his opportunity. Mendelssohn, with his customary promptness in recognizing and assisting aspirants, gave the young man a warm letter of recommendation to the great publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel. So effective were the master’s words that Raff’s first work was published in January, 1843. Thenceforward the current of his life could not be checked, and despite the opposition of his parents, he devoted his future to music. No critical notice of Raff’s opus 1 has been found, but opus 2 (“Trois Pièces Caracteristique” for piano) is mentioned with kindness in Schumann’s journal, theNeue Zeitschrift für Musik, of Aug. 5, 1844. The critic found in the composition “something which points to a future for the composer.” One readily discerns here the keen insight of the greatest of all music critics, Schumann himself. Favorable comments were made on the young composer’s works numbered opus 2 to 6 in theAllgemeine Musikalische Zeitungof Aug. 21 in the same year, and we may readily understand that with such encouragements Raff bent his whole mind to the production of music.

In 1845 the wizard Liszt appeared in Switzerland. The great pianist was not long in discovering Raff’s gifts and was equally quick to see that the young man was struggling against privations that would have overwhelmed a weaker nature. Liszt invited Raff to accompany him on a concert tour, and thus laid the foundations of the beginner’s reputation. Together they travelled in the principal German cities, the tour ending at Cologne. Thence Liszt returned to Paris, but Raff remained. This stay in Cologne was a happy one, for it led to a personal acquaintance with Mendelssohn. The famous master, who had given the young composer his first help, now displayed fresh interest in him and made him a proposition to go to Leipsic and continue his studies under Mendelssohn’s own guidance. Such an offer was not to be refused, but the fates were not propitious. Just as Raff was making his preparations to go to Leipsic in the fall of 1847 Mendelssohn’s untimely death put an end to his hopes. He had not been idle while in Cologne, however, for he had studied composition with great earnestness, and had sent to theCäcilia, published in Berlin by the noted contrapuntist, Siegfried Dehn, many contributions displaying wide knowledge of musical science. Later he published “Die Wagnerfrage” (“The Wagner Question”), a pamphlet which attracted much attention, as did all discussions of the works of the Bayreuth genius.

Raff now became anxious to make a permanent home for himself in one of the larger German cities. He appealed once more to Liszt, who gave him a letter of introduction to Mechetti, at that time a prominent publisher of Vienna. It seemed as if ill luck relentlessly pursued Raff, for while he was actually on the way to visit Mechetti, the latter died. In spite of such obstacles to his advancement the composer continued his labors with undaunted spirit. He returned to his old home at Würtemberg and resumed his studies. For a short time he taught and studied at Stuttgart, seeking in the latter city to fill the gaps in his early training. That his ambition was unconquered is well proved by the fact that in Stuttgart he wrote his first large work, an opera in four acts entitled “King Alfred.” In Stuttgart, too, he was in some measure recompensed for his many trials and adversities by making the acquaintance of one who was destined to be his life-long friend and his champion after death. This was Hans von Bülow, then a youth of barely twenty, not yet the famous pupil of Liszt, but a law student who was neglecting his studies for the pursuit of music. Von Bülow, no doubt, perceived that to introduce to the public a new composer of merit would add to his own success as a player, and he accordingly performed from memory a recently finished composition of Raff’s, which he had seen for the first time two days before. The result was a storm of applause for both player and composer. This success cemented the friendship of the two, and, as all who have often heard the pianist well know, Dr. von Bülow very rarely plays a miscellaneous programme on which the name of Raff does not appear.

It was in 1850 that the young man met Liszt again, this time in Hamburg, and followed the magnet of attraction to Weimar. Here at last it seemed as if Raff had found the atmosphere for which his spirit hungered. Music, literature and art permeated the air; and the foreign artists who came to lay their tributes of flattery before the throne of the musical idol of the hour had smiles of approval for Raff, who basked in the sunlight and let the essence of the new German ideas in music saturate his soul. He went to work with renewed vigor, and inspired by the presence of competent performers wrote his first chamber music (Quatuor No. 1 in D minor for strings), some of his best piano suites, his setting of Geibel’s “Traum König und Sein Lieb” (“Dream King and his Love”), “Wachet auf” and other well known works. Raff made himself popular and respected in the artistic circles of Weimar by his learning. When Berlioz, who was ignorant of German, was there and a banquet was given in his honor, Raff relieved the situation of some difficulty by making the address to the guest in Latin, an attention which highly delighted the Frenchman.

In the meantime Raff had found his domestic fate in Doris Genast, an actress, grand-daughter of Goethe’s favorite actor. This young lady having accepted an engagement in Wiesbaden, the composer followed her thither in 1856. He speedily became the most popular music teacher in the city, but his compositions still failed to find a ready market. Nevertheless he employed his spare hours unceasingly in writing. In 1859 he and Fräulein Genast were married, and a daughter was the result of their union. Previous to his marriage he composed in 1858 his second violin sonata and the incidental music to “Bernhard von Weimar,” a drama by Wilhelm Genast. The overture to this drama became a favorite and was played frequently in many parts of Germany. In the summer of 1859, however, he began the work which was to establish his fame. This was his first symphony, “In the Fatherland.” It was ready for the publisher in 1861, when the composer was informed of the prize offered by the “Society of the Friends of Music of the Austrian Empire” (“Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde”), for the best symphony offered in competition. Raff sent in his new work, and in 1863 a committee consisting of Ferdinand Hiller, Carl Reinecke, Dr. Ambros, Robert Volkmann and Vincenz Lachner adjudged it the best of thirty-two compositions. Other large works followed, and their success enabled him to give up teaching to devote himself wholly to composing. No artist’s life shows more plainly than Raff’s the result of escape from poverty’s iron control. Hitherto he had written copiously for the drawing-room, but now he sought to produce works wholly artistic in purpose. His retirement after the beginning of the year 1870 was almost idyllic, being broken only by the visits of fellow artists. It is impossible to agree with the oft-repeated statement that his best works date from this period, for the beautiful “Im Walde” (“In the Forest”) symphony appeared in 1869; but there is every proof of a higher purpose in the compositions after 1870 than in the majority of those originating earlier than that year. Perhaps, too, Raff’s lack of business ability may be accepted as an evidence of his artistic sincerity. For his first, second and fourth symphonies he received no cash payment; for the third (“Im Walde”) he got sixty thalers, the same amount being paid him again, when the work was sold to a French publisher. Thereafter, however, he seems to have acquired courage enough to ask fair prices for his works.

In 1877 Raff left Wiesbaden to become director of the new Conservatory of Music at Frankfort. He taught composition himself, arranged the library, and conducted the institution upon such a broad-minded plan that its success was assured from the beginning. He continued his labors in composition, his symphonies after the seventh, having been written at Frankfort together with other important works. Ignorant of the fact that a mortal disease had fastened upon him he worked with undiminished zeal till 1882, when on the night of June 24, heart disease ended his career.

Fac-simile autograph letter from Raff to a personal friend.

Raff’s principal works are the following: operas—“King Alfred,” Weimar, 1850; “Dame Kobold,” (comic) Weimar, 1870; “Benedetto Marcello,” (lyric), not performed; “Samson” (opera seria), not performed.

For voices and orchestra—“Wachet Auf” (“Be on Guard”), opus 80; “Deutschland’s Auferstehung” (“Germany’s Resurrection”), opus 100; festival cantata for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Leipsic; “De Profundis” (Psalm CXXX.) for eight voices and orchestra, opus 141; and “Morgenlied” (“Morning Song”), for mixed chorus and orchestra, opus 171.

For orchestra: symphonies—“In the Fatherland,” opus 96; No. 2, in C, opus 140; No. 3, “Im Walde,” in F, opus 153; No. 4, in G minor, opus 167; No. 5, “Lenore,” in E, opus 177; No. 6, in D minor, opus 189; No. 7, “In den Alpen,” B flat, opus 201; No. 8, “Frühlingsklänge,” (“Sounds of Spring”) in A, opus 205; No. 9, “Im Sommer” (“In the Summer”) in E minor, opus 208; No. 10, “Im Herbstzeit” (“In Autumn”), F minor, opus 213; No. 11, “Der Winter,” A minor, opus 214; four suites in C, F, E minor and B flat; and nine overtures, including those to “Romeo and Juliet,” “Othello,” “Macbeth” and the “Tempest.”

For piano with orchestra—“Ode to Spring,” opus 76; concerto in C minor, opus 185; and suite in E flat, opus 200.

For violin with orchestra—concerto No. 1 in B minor, opus 161; concerto No. 2, in A minor, opus 206.

In addition to these principal works there is a great mass of chamber music, piano compositions, songs and ’cello pieces.

It may, perhaps, be unfortunate for Raff’s fame that his dramatic works are unknown in this country, though it is indisputable that none of them has achieved high repute in German. It is probable, although we in America know far less about the music of this gifted man than the Germans do, the estimate of his abilities generally accepted on this side of the Atlantic is a wise one. He is regarded as a composer who, possessing exceptional fecundity of melodic invention and rare mastery of orchestral tone-color, sought to impose upon music a definiteness of expression somewhat beyond its power. This eagerness to delineate in detail a chain of feelings or impressions led Raff into diffuseness of style and to frequent sacrifices of those formal elaborations which are regarded as essential to the construction of artistic music. He has been generally thought to lack self-criticism and a want of restraint resulting therefrom; but it has always seemed to the present writer that Raff’s errors were not in the direction of criticism, but of fundamental belief. In other words he let the beautiful vision of a genus of pictorial programme music which is to be more expressive than speech run away with his reason. The preface to his “In the Fatherland” symphony clearly exhibits his idea of the possibilities of music.

Now it is neither necessary nor expedient to repeat here any of the familiar discussion as to the expressive power of music. The most serious thinkers about the art, even when they disagree in details, are generally of the opinion that music can express only the broader emotions, and requires text to make clear the cause of the feelings. We are able to get great pleasure, and at times genuine emotional exaltation from the music of Raff provided we are willing to approach it in the only fair spirit in which programme music can be approached—that of willingness to accept the composer’s premises. The first movement of the “Fatherland” symphony has strength and aspiration, and we have only to accept Raff’s explanation that he is singing of Germany to enter into the heart of his composition. In the same way we are obliged to approach the “Lenore,” the “Im Walde” and his other symphonies. The grisly story of Burger’s “Lenore” is told in detail in the finale of the symphony, but in order to follow the music we need the poem. Having that, we perceive the aptness and peculiar fitness of the composer’s rhythmic and melodic fancies. Nothing could have a more stimulating effect upon the imagination—once the key to the secret is possessed—than the inexorable persistence of the groups of a quaver and two semi-quavers by which the infernal flight of the lovers is indicated. If perchance we find an instrumental representation of a gallop not new (it having been invented by Claudio Monteverde in the beginning of the seventeenth century) we can at any rate get all the effect designed by Raff in his woodwind shrieks of the nightbirds and his trombone hymn for the dead.

Pensée fugitive—Joachim RaffFac-simile autograph manuscript of an “Album Leaf” by Raff.

Fac-simile autograph manuscript of an “Album Leaf” by Raff.

He has achieved a greater fidelity of feeling and a subtler realism of tones, however, in his “Im Walde,” which is generally looked upon as his masterpiece. The first movement is intended to bring to the hearer’s mind the woods in the sunlit beauty of noon. The second reveals them to us in the suggestive shadow of twilight. In the third movement the composer entertains us with an airy and delicate dance of Dryads, a woodland scherzo in deed and in truth. In the fourth and last movement we have a musical embodiment of the familiar German legend of the Wild Huntsman. A gentle fugal thought pictures the repose of the woods. Suddenly the rhythm of the galloping hunt is heard, as it were, in the distance. Nearer and nearer it comes, till the whole orchestra thunders with its riotous fury. It dies away in the distance, returns and dies away again. Then comes the glory of sunrise. This symphony makes less demands in the way of preparation than many of Raff’s other works. The single suggestion that he is painting the forest and that there is a wild hunt is all that the imagination needs to give it complete enjoyment of this work. Freedom of form is a natural result of the kind of composition in which Raff excelled and his ability to write quickly and with little effort prevented his feeling the necessity of working out his compositions with the care and science of the classical school. One gets much less intellectual satisfaction, therefore, out of Raff’s work than out of Schumann’s, who was his precursor, and still less than out of Mozart’s. But the ear and the imagination are delighted by the clear intelligibility of his melodic ideas, their unfailing poetic sentiment and musical grace. It is these qualities of his themes, together with the splendid colors in which his orchestral palette is so rich, that have given to his symphonic works their wide popularity, and have made the name of Raff recognized as that of one of the really gifted followers of the romantic school founded by Schumann and Schubert. In the general outline his symphonies follow the laws of the earlier masters, notably in the distribution of the movements. His separate movements, however, are not always built according to the old rules, his finales being notably free and irregular. It can only be said, then, in concluding this brief estimate of his symphonic writing, that his works in the large orchestral form are admirable examples of that class of modern composition in which structural skill and scientific development are sacrificed to warmth of sentiment and opulence of color. In a word, they belong to what may be called the impressionist school of music.

Lest it be supposed that Raff was deficient in musical learning, let us note that his chamber music, always melodious and graceful, frequently displays profound mastery of the resources of his art. His sextet in G minor, opus 178, deserves especial mention because it is one of his most carefully written productions. It is written for two violins, two violas and two ’cellos in six real parts, and every trick of canon and imitation is introduced. One commentator enthusiastically describes it as “a veritable triumph of counterpoint.” In his treatment of the first subject of his “In the Fatherland” symphony, too, he writes a canon in augmentation and double augmentation that would have delighted the eye of Bach himself. Dr. Franz Gehring, of Vienna, in his article on Raff in Grove’s “Dictionary of Music” calls attention to the interesting fact that “in the pianoforte concerto in C minor (opus 185) in each movement all the subjects are in double counterpoint with one another, yet this is one of Raff’s freshest and most melodious works.” The composer’s piano music is very popular, and some of it, notably the variations on an original theme (opus 179) and most of the suites, is remarkable for its fertility of resource as well as for the composer’s usual readiness for the production of new melodies. His songs are equally rich in tunefulness and many of them have attained the rare distinction of becoming the common property of the German people.

Raff may not deserve a seat among the Titans of music. Yet his originality, his grace of thought and his oriental gorgeousness of utterance lift him above the level of mediocrity and stamp him as a man possessed of rare and valuable gifts. His larger works show every evidence of artistic earnestness, and had he been less imbued with impressionistic ideas and more free from the burdens of poverty, he might have attained perfection of art.

N. J. Henderson.

JOHANNES BRAHMSReproduction of a triplex photograph from life, made in 1889 by Brasch.

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