| Joachim Raff |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOACHIM RAFF | |
| 1822 births | |
| raff, joachim | |
| 1882 deaths | |
| romantic composers | |
| swiss classical pianists | |
| raff | |
| opera composers | |
| swiss composers | |
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Raff was born in Lachen in Switzerland . He was largely self-taught in music, studying the subject while working as a schoolmaster. He sent some of his piano compositions to Felix Mendelssohn who recommended them to Breitkopf And Härtel for publication. They were published in 1844 and received a favourable review in Robert Schumann 's journal, the '' Neue Zeitschrift Für Musik '', which prompted Raff to go to Zürich and take up composition full time. In 1845, Raff walked to Basel to hear Franz Liszt play the piano. After a period in Stuttgart where he became friends with the conductor Hans Von Bülow , he worked as Liszt's assistant at Weimar from 1850 to 1853. During this time he helped the Hungarian in the Orchestration of several of his works, claiming to have had a particularly big part in orchestrating the Symphonic Poem '' Tasso ''. In 1851, Raff's Opera ''König Alfred'' was staged in Weimar, and five years later he moved to Wiesbaden where he largely devoted himself to composition. From 1877 he was the first Director of, and a teacher at, the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt Am Main . There he employed Clara Schumann and a number of other eminent musicians as teachers, and established a class specifically for female composers (this was at a time when women composers were not taken very seriously). His pupils there included Edward MacDowell and Alexander Ritter . He died in Frankfurt Am Main . Raff was very prolific, and by the end of his life was one of the best known German composers, though his work is largely forgotten today (the only one of his pieces received anything like regular performance today is a cavatina for violin and piano, sometimes played as an encore). He drew influence from a variety of sources - his eleven Symphonies , for example, combine the Classical symphonic form, with the Romantic penchant for Program Music and Contrapuntal orchestral writing which harks back to the Baroque . Most of these symphonies carry descriptive titles including ''In the Forest'' (number three), ''Lenore'' (No. 5) and ''To the Fatherland'' (No. 1), a very large-scale work lasting around seventy minutes. His last four symphonies make up a quartet of works based on the four seasons. The ''Lenore'' symphony, famous in its time, was inspired by a ballad by Gottfried Bürger ( 1747 – 1794 ) that also inspired works by several other composers, including Maria von Paradis (1789), Henri Duparc , Franz Liszt (late 1850s, mentioned by Alan Walker in his Liszt biography vol. 2), for example. Raff also composed in most other genres, including Concerto s, Opera , Chamber Music and works for solo piano. His chamber works include two Piano Sonata s, five Violin Sonata s, a Cello Sonata , a Piano Quintet , two Piano Quartet s, a String Sextet and four Piano Trio s. Many of these works are now commercially recorded. He also wrote numerous suites, some for smaller groups (there are suites for piano solo and suites for string quartet), some for orchestra and one each for piano and orchestra and violin and orchestra. WORKS Symphonies
Other orchestral works
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