Joachim Raff: A Composer with a Message for Today’s Switzerland

The original version of this text was first published with many pictures on sichtweisenschweiz.ch

When Franz Josef Raff (1789-1861) fled from Empfingen-Wiesenstetten in southern Germany to Switzerland in 1810 on the advice of his father, he had no idea that his future son Joseph Joachim would have a world career as a composer. The Napoleonic Wars, especially the preparations for the Russian campaign and the early death of a brother in the war, ultimately trigger the escape to the Wettingen AG monastery. The musically gifted Franz Josef came to Lachen, the Märchler district capital, in 1817, after a job as a tutor in Lucerne, as a teacher and church musician. Progressive circles from the village’s revolutionary liberal elite, together with the parish, founded a primary school in addition to the Latin school, and Father Raff served as a strict teacher who also excelled in church music.

Through her marriage to the daughter of the neighboring, politically rebellious Ochsenwirt and mayor Franz Joachim Schmid, Katharina, the mood in the Raff family becomes significantly politicized. Schmid is one of the ringleaders who defend themselves against the dominance of the powerful noble families and patricians in Schwyz and, together with the fairytale doctor Melchior Diethelm, want to create an independent canton of Ausserschwyz. Melchior Diethelm later became one of the architects of the Swiss bicameral system. Joachim Raff was born on May 27, 1822 in the old Sust from the 16th century. This “multi-purpose building” serves as a commercial and commercial building as well as a school and armory. There also has to be room for the teacher’s apartment.

Early giftedness of Joachim

Throughout his entire school years in Switzerland until 1840, Joachim stood out for his hard work, musicality, multiple talents, lonerism, ambition and even a wish, expressed to his mother, to do something very special in life. His strict father teaches him to play the violin, piano and organ. He mastered Latin at an early age and at the Jesuit college in Schwyz, which he attended from 1838-1840, he was at the top of his class several times in a wide variety of subjects. He will continue his self-taught career throughout his life and develop into one of the most recognized music historians and composers. Early influences and excellent genetics are crucial for his success.

The early politicization at his grandfather’s tavern table, the awareness of being the son of a correspondingly exposed political refugee and therefore belonging to a minority, but also his high sensitivity, his strong intellect and his striking personality accompanied Raff throughout his life.

Early Raff compositions were sung by him and his fellow students in 1840 on the occasion of the “Pannerfest” for the bannerman Theodor Ab Yberg (1795-1869) in Schwyz. He was also impressed by the visit of the Schwyz rural community to Rothenthurm on May 3, 1840.

Joachim Raff is enthusiastic about the political customs, the corresponding democratic rites, processes and elections in this politically very uncertain time of transition from a confederation of states to a federal state and thus the foundation stone of Switzerland.

He wrote about it in May 1840 in the then well-known Catholic-conservative newspaper “Sanct Gallischer Truthfriend”. He develops his own identity based on justice and equality early on. In his CV there are indications of early bullying, ostracism because of his giftedness and impressive, very personal conflict resolution regarding his strict father (he goes on hunger strike against him).

Throughout his life, he always defines himself with conviction and with an expressly equal consciousness as someone who comes from the mother country of Switzerland and with Germany as his fatherland.

This can all be read from the biography of daughter Helene Raff, the writer and painter, about her father (Bosse, Ravensburg 1925).

First professional experiences and years of travel

Although Joachim Raff wanted to become a professional musician against his parents’ wishes, he gained his first professional experience as a teacher in Rapperswil from 1840 to 1844.

An expert opinion from the already well-known musician Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) attested to his above-average musicality, which finally triggered his risky career change to becoming a freelance musician in 1843. This courageous, adventurous step, taken against all odds, not only drives him away from his family, but also straight into homelessness on Platzspitz in Zurich.

Thanks to a somewhat desperate contact with Franz Liszt (1811-1886), who was then celebrated as a star pianist, at the Casino Basel in June 1845, he was able to receive promising support.

After the first joint project, the inauguration of the Beethoven monument in Bonn in August 1845, Liszt found him various work opportunities in music halls in Cologne, Stuttgart and Hamburg. Many more or less successful compositions for piano were created during this time. Above all, Raff learns a lot on his own, interacts with musicians and publishes in various international specialist magazines. In Stuttgart, Raff got to know and appreciate his most important friend and supporter for life, Hans von Bülow (1830-1894).

Profiling in Weimar

Joachim Raff took the step towards assisting Franz Liszt in the transition from 1849/50. Although the composer from Lachen also feels a bit exploited by Liszt (a lot of instrumentation, orchestrations, dealing with correspondence, organizing trips and music days, negotiations with publishers, journalistic activities), he is also supported by him (help with his own compositions, performances with Raff’s works on the piano, conducting Raff’s works, offering a variety of relationships, etc.). However, the progressive emancipation from his sponsor is also unstoppable because of stylistically different opinions.

Right from the start, Raff consistently follows the path of processing a wide variety of stylistic elements from music history, which he is continually inspired by. He is not familiar with the disputes over the direction that were passionately waged in the 19th century.

At the same time, he makes sure to follow his own path, his own music, and ultimately his own style. Above all, his contrapuntal mastery, his colorful instrumentation and his complexity in processing the themes become his trademark.

Raff expands his compositional activities. Songs, chamber music works, even an opera (“King Alfred”) are the focus of his further musical development at a young age. Successes, but also failures, occur in parallel.

His network of relationships expands significantly. He met, among others, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), the violinists Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), Edmund Singer (1831-1912), Alexander Ritter (1833-1896), the cellist Bernhard Cossmann (1822-1911), but also representatives of the Weimar court such as Grand Duke Carl Alexander (1805-1863). He can talk personally and at eye level with the composers Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Robert Franz (1815-1892), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and Louis Spohr (1784-1859). He also regularly exchanged ideas with progressive writers such as Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) and August Heinrich von Fallersleben (1798-1874).

The Wagner question

In particular, the charisma and success of Richard Wagner challenge Raff. The radical reorientation of the opera as a total work of art inspires him. With his book “The Wagner Question” (1854), Raff takes a deeper, critical look at the star of his time. Raff tries to counteract Wagner’s leitmotif technique, the role of the orchestra and the expansion of the harmony with his own interpretation. He deals with this in practice with the fairy tale epic “Sleeping Beauty” (1856).

The musical drama “Samson” (written between 1851 and 1857) should have been part of his doctorate, but also a work equivalent to Wagner (Lohengrin). Raff also wanted to obtain the qualifications for a secretary position at the Goethe Foundation or a curator at the Weimar library (music department). The example impressively shows Raff’s three great potentials, which became apparent in his early youth: academic career, composer’s career and, what still needs to be described, his career as a university teacher and university director. Various reasons prevent the performance of the finished tragedy. Only in 2022, Joachim Raff’s 200th birthday, will the successful world premiere take place at the German National Theater in Weimar. And in 2023, the world premiere recording will be realized at the Bern Theater under the overall project management of Graziella Contratto (Swiss Fonogramm label).

Breakthrough in Wiesbaden

In Weimar, Joachim Raff also met his future wife, the actress Doris Genast (1827-1912). She works at the theater in Wiesbaden and the hundreds of pages of mutual letters from her long-distance relationship between Wiesbaden and Weimar are fortunately still available and form the basis for future research on the “Silver Age of Weimar”.. The tourist and culturally diverse spa town of Wiesbaden was therefore also the place that Raff chose in 1856 as his future place of work and life until 1877.

As if the floodgates were opening, Joachim Raff plunges into his most fruitful, productive and successful creative period as a composer.

Demanding piano suites, first concerts in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, which he conducted himself, the award ceremony in 1863 at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna with his first symphony “To the Fatherland”, demanding large sonatas for piano and violin, many other chamber music works (trios, quartets, quintets, sextet, octet), songs and choral works, successful symphonies (e.g. the 3rd symphony op. 153 “Im Walde” in 1869, or the 5th Symphony, op. 177, “Lenore”), which were performed worldwide, characterize this time. New operas were also created (e.g. “The Parole”; “Lady Goblin”).

Joachim Raff’s private life also changed. In 1859 he married Doris Genast, the daughter of the Weimar director and actor Eduard Genast (1797-1866), who still worked with Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) at the court in Weimar.

In 1865 the couple’s only daughter, Helene, arrived. She was brought up and educated by the then avant-garde couple, both artists and professionals, who were progressive and equal. She learns the same school subjects as her male colleagues and she will be one of the pioneers of the women’s movement in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

Joachim Raff receives various honors, knight’s crosses and medals of merit from various duchies in Germany, Luxembourg and Italy. In 1872, together with Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, he received honorary membership in the New York Philharmonic. He dedicated a piano concerto to his friend Hans von Bülow and honored the then leading cellist Friedrich Grützmacher (1832-1903) with the Concerto for Cello, op. 193. Another world-class instrumentalist, the Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908), took on Raff’s extensive violin work and disseminated it almost worldwide.

Director of Dr. Hoch’schen Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main

It is a deep satisfaction and honor for the self-taught Joachim Raff that in 1877 he was chosen as the first director of the newly founded Dr. Hoch’schen Conservatory is requested. Also up for discussion are personalities such as Johannes Brahms and Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901). The Frankfurt lawyer Dr. Joseph Hoch (1815-1874) bequeathed a significant fortune to the city to enable the founding of this university.

With enthusiasm, Raff put together an important teaching staff and quickly developed the school into an internationally recognized music college. He teaches composition himself. Franz Liszt and many other important musicians visited the institute several times.

As a special feature, Raff employs the top pianist and composer Clara Schumann (1819-1896). A woman as a professor at a university is unusual and once again demonstrates the innovative director’s progressive, equal understanding of gender. Raff is also following her own visionary path by creating her own class of female composers. In his inaugural speech on September 22, 1878, Raff’s Samson studies are mentioned and “he gives an outline of music history in a concentrated form and sophisticated diction that is rarely found.” (Cahn P., The Hoch’sche Konservatorium, 1878-1978, 1979).

In addition, Joachim Raff continues to compose well-known works. Symphonies, an opera, orchestral preludes, a cantata, a song cycle and, above all, his important sacred work, the oratorio “End of the World Judgment New World”. This Opus 212 is one of his last works. Raff’s daughter, Helene, mentions in her biography about her father that towards the end of his life he was often haunted by premonitions of death. In 1881 he completed the comprehensive work and the following year, on June 24, 1882, Raff died of heart paralysis in Frankfurt am Main.

On the occasion of the 200th birthday in 2022, the mentioned oratorio will be performed impressively and worthy in the parish church of Lachen, the church of his birth and in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig by the Gewandhaus choirs and the Capella Lipsiensis under the direction of Gregor Meyer and recorded on CD.

A lasting legacy

Raff’s legacy is twofold. There’s his music. It has enjoyed an astonishing renaissance since the 1970s. Raff’s work is once again present in research (several dissertations, master’s theses, research projects in various countries), recording productions (around 150 CD productions from 55 labels), countless important concerts in all parts of the world, publications, podcast productions, presence in electronic media, and exhibitions.

Probably related to this, the responsible musicians also recognize Raff’s personality. In a time in which provocations, divisions, egoism, fake news, radicalization and nationalism are increasingly having a negative impact on world events, Raff’s work, which is based on harmonizing, connecting, coherent, well-founded knowledge and therefore respectful and appreciative insights, takes on a new dimension.

Many musicologists recognize the value of the “synthesis” with which they characterize the work of Joachim Raff. Raff was often able to argue harshly on the matter, pursue his goals with a certain stubbornness, and he even came into conflict with the law as a result of his temporary mountain of debt. But with his music and his social views he wanted to connect and not separate. He conveyed values ​​and reduced tensions. His view of people and the world fits well into the 21st century as a “counterpoint”.

List of sources

Books

— Cahn, Peter: The Hoch Conservatory 1878 – 1978, Frankfurt am Main, 1979

— Dörffel, Alfred: The Gewandhaus Concerts in Leipzig 1781 – 1881, reprint of the 1884 edition,

Leipzig, 1980

— Genast, Eduard: From Weimar’s classical period, Stuttgart, 1903

— Kolb, Severin: “The Wagner Question” – Joachim Raff’s discussion of Richard Wagner in Weimar (1850 – 1856), Raff Studies Volume 2, Wiesbaden, 2026

— Kolb, Severin and König, Stefan: (eds.), syntheses. Conference to open the Joachim Raff Archive, Lachen 2018 (Congress Report), Raff Studies Volume 1, Wiesbaden, 2026

— Kolb, Severin: Years of upheaval – Joachim Raff in Stuttgart (1847 – 1849) in Music in Baden-Württemberg, Marbach am Neckar, 2021 / 2022

— Marty, Res: Joachim Raff – Life and Work, Lachen, 2014

— Marty, Res: Anniversary publication, 50 years of the Joachim Raff Society, Lachen 2022

— Marty, Res: Lines & Sound, Documents & Stories from the Joachim Raff Archive, Lachen 2025

— Raff, Helene: Leaves from the Tree of Life, Munich, 1938

— Raff, Helene: Joachim Raff, a picture of his life, Regenburg, 1925

— Schäfer, Albert: Chronological-systematic directory of Joachim Raff’s works, Wiesbaden, 1888

— Thomas, Marc: The Music of Joachim Raff, An illustrated catalogue, Stuttgart, 2022

Documents

— Walter Labhart Documentation Library, Endingen AG

— Joachim Raff Archive / Collection Marty, laughter

This text was first published with many pictures on sichtweisenschweiz.ch