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| Composers Biography |  |
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Joachim Raff
[ Life | Works | Photo Gallery | Home Page] |
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The son of a music teacher, Joachim Raff followed in his father’s footsteps and began his career in Rapperswil. In 1844 he moved to Zurich where he met Mendelssohn and Liszt. He served the latter as an assistant at Weimar, orchestrating Liszt's earlier symphonic poems. His own work as a composer started in earnest when he left Weimar in 1856, to settle in Wiesbaden, From 1877 he was director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, a position he retained until his death. Raff enjoyed the highest reputation in his life-time, later to be remembered only for his famous Cavatina, an attractive short piece that appeared in many arrangements.
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| Raff enjoyed some success with his first opera, König Alfred, first staged in Weimar in 1853. One other of his six operas, Dame Kobold, received some contemporary attention. His eleven symphonies go some way towards a synthesis of pure music and the programmatic element of the Neo-German school exemplified in the symphonic poems of Liszt. Most of the symphonies have titles of one sort or another, the last four representing aspects of the four seasons. He wrote concertos for piano, for violin and for cello, and other works for solo instrument and orchestra, as well as a series of suites and overtures. Raff contributed to the repertoire of German chamber music with works ranging from piano quintets to duo sonatas, the last including five sonatas for violin and piano. - MIDI FILE – from Piano Sonata op.14: Allegro (9’28’’) Equally prolific in his work for the piano, Raff wrote a large number of shorter pieces, as well as transcriptions and fantasies derived from the current operatic repertoire. In addition to works for choir, including several psalm settings, Raff published four volumes of part-songs, three of them for male voices.
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