RAFF: Symphony No.

5, 'Lenore'

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About this Recording

8.223455 - RAFF: Symphony No. 5, 'Lenore'
English French
Joachim Raff (1822-1882)
Symphony No. 5 in E Major, Op. 177 "Lenore"
Overture: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, Op. 127
Musical reputations are fragile. Joachim Raff is still remembered principally as the composer of a Cavatina, a salon
piece, and as an assistant to Liszt in Weimar, little more than a foot-note in the history of the symphonic poem. In
his own time he enjoyed very considerable renown, justified, it seemed, by a prolific talent and by his distinction
as a teacher.
Raff was born in Lachen, near Zurich, in 1822. His father had taken refuge in Switzerland, leaving Wrttemberg to
avoid conscription into the French army. Raff's early education was, however, in Wrttemberg, followed by a
period of training as a teacher at the Jesuit Gymnasium in Schwyz, where he won prizes in Latin, German and
Mathematics. Thereafter he took employment as a school-master, while working hard at his private studies in
music. Mendelssohn, whom he had approached, recommended him to the attention of the Leipzig publishers
Breitkopf and Hrtel, who issued sets of his piano pieces in 1844, the year in which the young composer resolved
to try his luck in Zrich.
Raff's contact with Liszt began in 1845, when he walked to Basle to hear the latter play. He then accompanied
Liszt on his concert tour, and followed this, through the agency of Liszt, with work in Cologne, in part as a critic
and, less significantly, in a music-shop. He then moved to Stuttgart, where he met Hans von Blow, a musician
who remained a close friend in the years that followed, and renewed his connection with Mendelssohn, accepting
the latter's offer to teach him in Leipzig. Von Blow, meanwhile, took Raff's Concertstck for piano and orchestra
into his repertoire, something that was of material assistance in furthering the composer's reputation. The death
of Mendelssohn in 1847 allowed Liszt a further exercise of patronage in securing Raff work in Hamburg as an
arranger for a music-publisher.
In 1850 Raff moved to Weimar, where Liszt was now installed as Music Director Extraordinary, occupied with the
provision of music for the orchestra, and above all with the remarkable series of symphonic poems in which he
sought to combine the arts of literature and music. At the Villa Altenburg, where he lodged, to be joined shortly
by Hans von Blow, Raff served the master as secretary, copyist and factotum, and must, initially at least, have
had a considerable hand in the orchestration of Liszt's orchestral compositions. Whether he was as important as he
made out to his correspondents is open to question. "I have cleaned up Liszt's first Concerto symphonique for
him", he claimed in an early letter from Weimar, "and now I must score and copy Ce qu'on entend sur la
montagne". He declared the orchestration of Prometheus to be his, for the most part, and that he had performed
the same service for the symphonic poem Tasso. The violinist Joachim was later to repeat these claims on Raff's
behalf.
Clearly Liszt needed assistance, and this Raff could provide. Tasso, for example, had been written in 1849 for the
centenary of the birth of Goethe and had been scored by August Conradi. Liszt was dissatisfied, and handed the
music to Raff, who in 1851 produced a new version, to which Liszt made various subsequent alterations. Raff's
own opera Knig Alfred was staged in Weimar in the same year, without marked success, although it was given
three performances, but the validity of Raff's claimed share of Liszt's work is open to question.
In 1856, tired of a subordinate position at Weimar as one of a group of acolytes that attended on Liszt and
unhappy in his relationship with Liszt's blue-stocking mistress, the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein, Raff left
for Wiesbaden, where Knig Alfred was performed and where he was able to devote himself to composition,
teaching and marriage to Doris Genast, member of a well known Weimar theatre family. The period in Wiesbaden
was a productive one. It was followed in 1877 by appointment as director of the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfun,
where he succeeded in engaging Clara Schumann as a piano teacher, when the institution opened in 1878, the
only woman so employed. Further women were to be appointed two years later, and there was a class for women
composers, the first of its kind in Germany. Raff remained in Frankfurt until his death in 1882.
Four of Raff's six operas remained unperformed, but he proved very much more successful with his orchestral
works, chamber music and with an exceptionally large number of piano pieces. The quantity of his work prompted
Wagner's cynical remark to a correspondent that now he was composing like Raff or Brahms, in other words
copiously, since his views on the compositions of the latter, at least, were well known. Raff belongs in one way to
the Neo-German school of Wagner and Liszt, at least in the overtly programmatic element in nine of his eleven
numbered symphonies. In other ways he may well seem more academic in approach, making full use of most
available forms and of a strong element of counterpoint in works that are admirably orchestrated for a body of less
than Wagnerian proportions. Charges of superficiality and eclecticism can now be rebutted by renewed attention
to music that has much to say and is remarkable, if in no other way, for the clear influence it exercised on
composers like Richard Strauss.
The first of Raff's eleven numbered symphonies, An das Vaterland, was completed in 1861 and was awarded the

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RAFF: Symphony No. 5, 'Lenore'

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http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.2234...

Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde prize. Symphony No. 5 in E major, Op. 177, was completed in 1872 and
published the following year. Raff's division of the work into three Abteilung (sections) does not coincide here with
the four movements, two of which form the first section of the symphony, under the title Liebesglck, the
happiness of love. The first movement Allegro is in broadly classical form, its exuberant first subject contrasted
with the more lyrical second, with suggestions of the tragedy to come. An A flat major Andante quasi Larghetto
completes the first section. The movement is introduced by the strings, the melody poignantly echoed by the
French horn, which then pursues its own operatic theme. A dramatic G sharp minor passage moves into the
intense lyricism of a secondary theme, now heard a semitone higher, in E major, before the return of the opening
theme, now played by the flutes.
The second part of the symphony has the title Trennung, Parting, continuing the implied events that precede
those of Burger's poem Lenore, on which the symphony is based. The third movement opens as a C major March,
with a contrasting minor continuation. This is followed by an F major section, the first violins doubled by the
French horns in the march theme. The return of the first march theme leads to an agitated C minor passage in
which violins and cellos plead one with the other, before the march again intervenes, disappearing gradually into
the distance, as the soldiers march away.
It is the third section of the symphony, the fourth movement Allegro, Wiedervereinigung im Tode, Reunion in
Death, that is based directly on Brger's Kunstballade Lenore in music that follows much of the poetic narrative.
Gttfried August Brger was associated with the group of poets that formed the Gttinger Hainbund and in 1773
wrote his famous poem Lenore, published the following year in the Gttinger Musenalmanach. Based on the
Scottish ballad Sweet William's Ghost, Brger's poem tells of the grief of Lenore for her lover Wilhelm, killed in the
Seven Years' War. The girl turns against God in her despair, but at night the sound of a horse is heard outside
(Und auen, horch! ging's trapp trapp trapp, Ais wie von Roeshufen) and Wilhelm calls her down to him. She
joins him and the couple ride away together through the night, through the countryside, meeting a funeral
procession now bidden to the wedding-feast. The dead ride fast, and the figure before her asks again if she fears
the dead, but Doch lass die Toten, she replies, Let the dead be! On they ride, past the gibbet and through a gate
into the graveyard, as dawn approaches, and suddenly the horseman's uniform drops away, piece by piece, his
head becomes a skull, his body a skeleton, with hour-glass and scythe. The poem and the symphony end with the
moral, proclaimed by the spirits that had followed the couple, that men must be patient in adversity: "Geduld!
Geduld! Wenn's Herz auch bricht! Mit Gott im Himmel hadre nicht!" Patience! Patience! Even if your heart breaks!
Do not quarrel with God in Heaven!
Raff's Overture Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, Opus 127, was written in 1865 and dedicated to Hans von Blow. It
is described as an Overture for a drama of the Thirty Years War. The work opens ominously, its slow introduction,
Andante religioso, starting with a soft drum-roll, accompanied by muted double basses, before the contrapuntal
entry of the first violins, followed by cellos, second violins and violas in turn. The familiar notes of Martin Luther's
most famous hymn appear first in the woodwind, to be joined by other instruments of the orchestra, before the
succeeding Allegro eroico, marked non troppo vivo, ma vigoroso. This faster section, changing from the earlier D
major to D minor, with its sharply rhythmic string figure, is punctuated by the loud intervention of the wind
instruments, introducing music in tripartite sonata-form, derived from the chorale of the title. A passage for solo
cello, accompanied only by sustained viola chords, leads to a final Andante, where the lower strings announce
again Luther's famous melody. The Overture ends in victory with a final grandiose and triumphant Allegro.
Urs Schneider
Urs Schneider was born in St. Gall and by the age of fifteen had established his own 70-member orchestra, the Pro
Musica Orchestra, which gave regular concerts in Switzerland until 1963. He was trained as a violinist at Zrich
Conservatory, and took lessons in conducting with Rafael Kubelik in Lucerne, Igor Markevitch in Madrid and Otto
Klemperer in London and Zrich.
In 1962 Urs Schneider founded the Camerata Helvetica, of which he continued to be conductor and director until
1984. From 1976 to 1983 he was music director of the Camerata Stuttgart and in 1982 was appointed music
director of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. He has enjoyed a successful international career, with engagements
throughout Europe, Asia, Russia, Israel, North and South America, Australia and South Africa. Since 1991 he has
been Principal Conductor of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of the "Ars et Musica"
Festival in Aranno, Switzerland.

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