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Scan 27
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians, 1922
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1gelitten, gestritten, gestorben, umworben') in 1876, and the 7th ('Alpensinfonie') in 1877, the 8th ('Frühlingsklänge') in 1878, and the 9th ('Im Sommerzeit') in 1880. A 10th ('Zur Herbstzeit') was played at Wiesbaden; and the 11th, left unfinished at his death, was revised by Erdmannsdörfer. In 1870 his comic opera 'Dame Kobold' was produced at Weimar. Other operas for which he himself wrote the libretti have not been performed in public. Two cantatas, 'Wachet auf,' and another written for the Festival in commemoration of the battle of Leipzig, were his first works for men's voices, and are popular with choral societies. His arrangement of Bach's six violin sonatas for PF. is a work of great merit.
3Detailed analyses of the first six of these Symphonies will be found in the Monthly Musical Record for 1875, and from these a very good idea of the composer's style may be gathered. Remembering his struggles and hard life it is only a matter for wonder that he should have striven so earnestly and so long in a path that was not his natural walk. A glance at the nearly complete list of his works at the foot of this notice will explain our meaning. The enormous mass of 'drawing-room music' tells its own tale. Raff had to live, and having by nature a remarkable gift of melody and perhaps not much artistic refinement, he wrote what would pay. But on looking at his works in the higher branch of music—his symphonies, concertos, and chamber music—one cannot but be struck by the conscientious striving towards a high ideal. In the whole of his published Symphonies the slow movements, without a single exception, are of extreme melodic beauty, although weak from a symphonic point of view; the first movements are invariably worked out with surprising technical skill, the subjects appearing frequently in double counterpoint and in every kind of canon. And however modern and common his themes may appear, they have often been built up with the greatest care, note by note, to this end; showing that he does not, as is often said, put down the first thing that comes into his mind. Observe the following treatment of the first subject in his 1st Symphony 'An das Vaterland':—
5a canon in augmentation and double augmentation. Such instances as this are numerous, and the art with which these contrapuntal devices are made to appear spontaneous is remarkable. In the Pianoforte Concerto in C minor (op. 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. To return to the Symphonies: the Scherzos are, as a rule, weak, and the Finales without exception boisterous and indeed vulgar. Writing here, as ever, for an uneducated public, Raff has forgotten that for a symphony to descend from a high tone is for it to be unworthy of the name.
7A remarkable set of thirty Songs (Sanges-Frühling, op. 98) deserves notice for its wealth of fine melodies, some of which have become national property ('Kein Sorg um den Weg'; 'Schön' Else,' etc.); and among his pianoforte music is a set of twenty Variations on an original theme (op. 179) which displays an astonishing fertility of resource, the theme—of five and seven quavers in the bar—being built up into canons and scherzos of great variety and elegance.
9Raff's Pianoforte Concerto was very popular, and his Suite for Violin and Orchestra (op. 180) only little less so. His versatility need not be enlarged upon. In all the forms of musical composition he showed the same brilliant qualities and the same regrettable shortcomings. His gift of melody, his technical skill, his inexhaustible fertility, and above all his power of never repeating himself—all these are beyond praise. But his very fertility was a misfortune, since it rendered him careless in the choice of his subjects; writing 'pot-boilers' injured the development of a delicate feeling for what is lofty and refined; in short, the conscientious critic hesitates to allow him a place in the front rank of composers.
11Even those who have least sympathy with Raff's views on art must admire the energy and spirit with which he worked his way upwards in spite of every obstacle poverty could throw in his way. He was a member of several societies, and received various orders. In 1877 he was appointed with much éclat director of the Hoch conservatorium at Frankfort, a post he held until his death, in the night of June 24-25, 1882. [Since his death his music has passed, alike in Germany and England, into an oblivion which cannot excite surprise in those who realise the inherent weaknesses of the composer; and the sudden change on the part of the public, from a widespread admiration to almost complete neglect, is of itself a severe criticism on his work.]
13The first of his large works performed in this country was probably the Lenore Symphony at the Crystal Palace, Nov. 14, 1874. [The Musical World of August 1890, p. 629, contains a translation of Raff's letters explaining the meaning of the work.] This was followed by the 'Im Walde,' and the PF. Concerto in C minor (Jaell), at the Philharmonic; the Sym-
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