midicnMusic History 中文

Joseph Joachim Raff

From Weimar to Frankfurt, he turned the piano suite into a landscape

RomanticPianoSuite

Who he was

Joseph Joachim Raff (1822–1882) was born in Lachen, Switzerland, the son of a teacher. He taught himself composition, sent manuscripts to Mendelssohn as a young man and was encouraged, worked as a schoolteacher and sold music in Zurich. Around 1845 he met Liszt, served as Liszt's assistant in Weimar from 1850, settled in Wiesbaden, and in 1878 became the first director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt.

His place

Raff stood at the edge of Liszt's circle and the New German School. He copied and orchestrated for Liszt and knew programme music from the inside, yet preferred clearly built suites and symphonies. He wrote eleven symphonies, and his piano music is mostly sets and suites with titles pointing to forests, seasons and travel. That "programme without excess" position places him neatly between Liszt and Brahms.

What to hear

Listen first for the unity of a suite. The First Piano Suite Op.69 joins several movements, dance and song taking turns while a shared figure lets them recognise each other. Then hear the breathing of a miniature: the Three Salon Pieces Op.56 are true salon fare, melody carried by ornament and register, phrases short and deliberate. Then listen for what a title suggests. Each piece in Frühlingsboten Op.55 carries a seasonal or landscape heading, the same motive changing clothes in a new key; the Grande Sonate Op.14 is evidence of his early ambition, its paragraphs joined like Schumann's but drawn on a longer breath.

Key works

Influence

Raff survives mostly at the edge of recordings and syllabuses, yet two positions are hard to ignore. He carried Liszt's programme idea into the piano suite, making "a set of pieces about a place" a common later nineteenth-century form; and as first director of the Hoch Conservatory he passed that teaching on, with Edward MacDowell among his pupils. His symphonies have been recorded complete, and the piano suites, long out of print, are slowly returning to programmes and to teaching.

Listen in the library

Suite No.1 for Piano, Op.69C12:45《第一钢琴组曲》Op.69——几个乐章连成一幅风俗画，听舞曲与抒情段怎样交替（C1）Details3 Salonstücke, Op.56C14:42《三首沙龙小品》Op.56——典型沙龙体裁，听旋律怎样靠装饰与音区取胜（C1）DetailsFrühlingsboten, Op.55C14:38《春天的信使》Op.55——标题性小品集，听同一动机在不同调性里变形（C1）DetailsGrande sonate, Op.14C12:53《大奏鸣曲》Op.14——早期大结构作品，听舒曼式的段落连接与长气息（C1）Details

All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).

Sources

  • 拉夫生平、魏玛时期与法兰克福音乐学院职位，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Raff, Joachim"；本文为原创表述
  • 十九世纪钢琴组曲与标题小品的背景，参通行拉夫研究；实例 why 为本站听辨提示

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.