J. B. Millet Company
Copyright, 1891, by
J. B. Millet Company.
JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF
Reproduction of a photograph from life, made in 1878 by Mondel & Jacob, in Wiesbaden.
JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF
Joseph Joachim Raff, was the son of an organist and teacher, Franz Joseph Raff, who early in 1822 left the little Würtemberg city of Weisenstetter in the Horb district of the Black Forest to settle in Lachen on the lake of Zurich in the canton Schwyz. Here on May 27 of the same year the boy was born. In his early childhood he displayed that mental ability which does not always fulfill its promise in years of maturity. He was able to translate Homer at the age of seven and generally preferred books to rude outdoor sports. He displayed musical tendencies, too, learning to play the organ and to sing in the choir; but no special attention was given to his musical training, probably because his facility in this art was regarded as only an evidence of his general activity of mind. He was first put to school at the Würtemberg Institute, and after a thorough preparation there, was sent to the Schwyz Jesuit Lyceum. He was graduated with distinction, carrying off prizes in Latin and mathematics, but his means were not sufficient to enable him to take a university course. He obtained the post of tutor of Latin at St. Gallen, where he remained a short time, afterward going as a teacher to Rapperswyl. He was at this time hardly twenty years of age. He now began his study of music, for which his fondness had been growing. He was unable to afford a teacher, but he diligently practised at the piano and made many earnest attempts at composition.
The patron saint of musical Germany in 1842 was Mendelssohn and in August of that year he set off on one of his tours in Switzerland. No date is recorded, but we may be sure that Raff seized upon this visit as his opportunity. Mendelssohn, with his customary promptness in recognizing and assisting aspirants, gave the young man a warm letter of recommendation to the great publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel. So effective were the master’s words that Raff’s first work was published in January, 1843. Thenceforward the current of his life could not be checked, and despite the opposition of his parents, he devoted his future to music. No critical notice of Raff’s opus 1 has been found, but opus 2 (“Trois Pièces Caracteristique” for piano) is mentioned with kindness in Schumann’s journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, of Aug. 5, 1844. The critic found in the composition “something which points to a future for the composer.” One readily discerns here the keen insight of the greatest of all music critics, Schumann himself. Favorable comments were made on the young composer’s works numbered opus 2 to 6 in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Aug. 21 in the same year, and we may readily understand that with such encouragements Raff bent his whole mind to the production of music.