Joachim Raff (1822-1882)

Sinfonietta for 10 wind instruments op.188 (1873)

Joseph Joachim Raff was born on 27 May 1822 in the small town of Lachen, on the shores of lake Zürich in Switzerland. His father, Joseph, a native of Württemberg had, in 1811, fled south to avoid compulsory conscription into Napoleon's army and set himself up as a schoolmaster in Lachen where he married Katharina Schmid. As a child, Joachim showed great natural talent as a pianist, violinist and organist, and taught himself the rudiments of harmony and composition. In 1840 he began working as a teacher, and composed music in his spare time. He plucked up the courage to send some of his piano works to Mendelssohn, who was impressed and recommended them to his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel. Encouraged by this, and other favourable reviews he gave up his teaching job and moved to Zürich in 1844 to start a career as a composer. His horrified father wrote "he has made nothing of himself but a begging musician". His fears were proved correct: Raff was shortly after declared bankrupt.

While living in poverty in Zurich, the aspiring composer walked the 80 kilometers to Basle in order to hear the famous Franz Liszt play. He arrived in the pouring rain to find that all the tickets were sold. However, just before the concert began Lizst was told the extraordinary story of Raff’s determination to hear him play and insisted that he should be given a seat on the stage. Dripping wet he sat there, as he later wrote "oblivious to everything but my good fortune in seeing and hearing Liszt". This incident was the start of a long relationship between the two in which Lizst employed Raff on a meagre wage as a secretary and copyist, but also helped him to promote his own music. The relationship was never easy. Lizst was a tyrannical employer, making Raff work hard, and Raff resented his subservient role. He was very poorly paid, and on one occasion, being committed to prison for debt, wrote that his cell was far more comfortable than his lodgings. Gradually his reputation grew. In 1851, his first opera "King Alfred" was performed three times in Weimar’s Hoftheater with Liszt’s help. In 1853 Raff met his future wife Doris Genast (1826-1902), the actress daughter of Eduard Genast, the director of Weimar’s court theatre and a friend of Liszt. They married in 1859 and she was to have a beneficial stabilising effect on him. With public and critical recognition growing, works of all sizes and genres poured from his pen. His third and fifth symphonies were particularly successful and at its height his reputation exceeded even that of Brahms. He died at 60 of a heart attack on the night of 24 June 1882 after several months of illness brought on by his heavy workload. The motto he wrote for his sixth symphony was a summary of his life; "Lived, Struggled, Suffered, Fought, Died, Glorified".

Raff was the first composer to use the name "Sinfonietta" for an orchestral work in several movements similar to a symphony, but shorter and lighter in content. The name was used by many later composers, most notably Janacek. His single example of the genre he created is indeed symphonic in style with seriousness of purpose and technical brilliance. However, the work has a relaxed sunny nature and a lightness of touch in the scoring for a small wind band.

The first movement of Raff's Sinfonietta was performed by winds of the Portobello Orchestra on the 24th March 2007. The conductor was Anthony Weeden.