Raff, Joachim

Raff, Joachim – Festmarsch für großes Orchester op. 139

(b. Lachen near Zurich, 27 May 1822 – d. Frankfurt/Main, 24 June 1882)

(1867)

Preface
The music of Joachim Raff’ has enjoyed a small renaissance in the last 20 years. For a long time, the once-famous musician was almost forgotten. When Pyotr Tchaikovsky attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1876, he noted that the greatest musicians in Europe were present, and he counted Raff among them alongside Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Gounod, Johannes Brahms and others. Raff did not found his reputation by creating operas like the famous aforementioned colleagues, but above all as a symphonist of the high rang. This was an impressive career, especially considering that at first he had to earn a meager living as a teacher and as a salesman in music shops.

Raff was born in Lachen near Zurich in 1822. He began composing as an autodidact and created his first work, the Serenade op. 1, in 1842. On the recommendation of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel printed a number of his piano pieces in 1844. His meeting with Franz Liszt in Basel in 1845 was fateful. In 1850, he went to Weimar as Liszt’s secretary and musical collaborator, where his duties included writing and possibly even partially orchestrating Liszt’s symphonic poems. In 1856 he finally moved to Wiesbaden, as he was gradually distancing himself artistically from Liszt and Wagner. His real breakthrough came with the composition of the symphony “An das Vaterland”, with which he won the orchestral competition of the ‘Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde’ (Vienna) in 1863. In 1877, he was elected director of the newly founded Hoch Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt am Main. He succeeded in engaging outstanding teachers, such as Clara Schumann, and was thus able to establish the institution’s international reputation. He remained in this position until his death in 1882. …

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