Franz Liszt in 1865

The major work which Raff completed in 1867 was De Profundis Op.141, an extended setting of Psalm 130 for chorus and orchestra. Dedicated "with great admiration" to Franz Liszt, it was Raff's successful attempt to effect a rapprochement with Liszt, to mend their fractured relationship which had worsened since his departure from Weimar eleven years before and was being made worse by the carping he continually faced from Liszt's followers. His great friend Hans von Bülow, then also Liszt's son in law, acted as a mediator between the two men and suggested that Raff dedicate the work to his mentor to demonstrate his genuine personal regard for him, which lived on despite the real differences of musical opinion that existed between them. It also had the advantage of fulfilling Liszt’s long-standing wish that he should write more sacred music. Liszt was delighted with the dedication and with the piece itself, which he regarded as an important work. De Profundis went on to embellish Raff's growing reputation, receiving many performances, including at one of the Allgemeine Musikfeste festivals and at Raff's own memorial service in Weimar. The other two significant works completed by Raff in 1867 were his String Quartet No.4 Op.137 and String Quartet No.5 Op. 138, together with the two Piano Four Hands Sonatas which Raff arranged from them. The quartets were published a couple of years later, but the sonatas remain in manuscript. Raff's major solo piano work that year was his Reminiscenzen aus Richard Wagner’s Oper: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg WoO.26, a major transcription of significant passages from Wagner's masterpiece, arranged in four sizeable numbers.

Taking Liszt's wishes seriously, in the following couple of years Raff went on to compose more religious music in the form of several a capella motets: the Vier Marianische Antiphonen WoO.27 of 1868 and the Kyrie & Gloria, Pater Noster and Ave Maria WoOs.31-33 of 1869. Liszt thought highly enough of the Antiphonen to suggest to Raff that he seek the Pope's permission to have them dedicated to him, but Raff declined the suggestion and they remained unpublished for another 140 years. Raff also contemplated writing a mass for the church at Lachen where he had been baptised and it is possible that the Kyrie & Gloria formed the opening of that work, but the mass itself never appeared. The Violin Sonata No.5 Op.145 was also a product of 1868, a year which was otherwise given over mainly to piano works, including Raff's arrangement for piano of all six of J.S. Bach's Cello Sonatas WoO.30, continuing his mission to popularise Bach's music by making it more accessible to modern audiences. It needs to be remembered that, despite his recent successes, Raff was still working full-time as a music teacher and so never had enough time to capitalise fully on his growing renown. The next year, though, proved to be a crucial one in his musical life, the year he cemented his position as one of Germany's leading composers.

In 1869 Raff brought all his powers to bear upon two major works of very different types. The first was his Symphony No.3 Im Walde (In the Forest) Op.153. In it, Raff's genius for rhythmic excitement, piquant orchestration, grateful melody and colourful scene painting came to the fore in a programme symphony which proved to be astoundingly popular. A work born of Raff’s profound love of nature and the German forests, it became for a time the most frequently programmed modern symphony, not only sweeping Germany but also the wider musical world. With it, Raff's fame as a symphonist approached the pinnacle at which it was to stay for the next few years. Typical of its reception is a report of a performance in Kassel in 1872: "When the Symphony came to an end, 'an absolute storm of applause filled the hall'; Raff made for the podium, whereupon the members of the orchestra took up position opposite the door which he had to come through and gave him a standing ovation, banging on their instruments – 'this, of course, amidst the wild cheers of the audience.'” At almost the same time Raff was working on his third opera, the comedy Dame Kobold (Phantom Lady) Op.154, based on Calderón's famous play La Dama Duende. It was premiered in Weimar the following year and was well received, but perhaps with some surprise because, as Liszt's mistress Princess Wittgenstein wrote “[it] astonishes me greatly. Raff light on his feet and a sparkle in his eye – who would have thought it!?” His golden years as a composer had arrived and Raff would at last be able to give up his teaching posts and devote his time fully to composition and promoting his music through guest conducting appearances around Germany (although accounts of his conducting expertise vary, it must be said).

Proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I

1870 was the year that both the Im Walde Symphony and Dame Kobold were premiered within a few weeks of each other, but the sudden and enormous success of the former meant that he had less time than he might have wished to devote to composition, although he did write the Piano Trios No.3 and No.4 Opp.155 & 158, Zehn Gesänge Op.195 (a second set of ten songs for men's choir) and some piano works including the perennially popular piano piece La Fileuse Op.157 No.2, but the year was overshadowed by the onset of the Franco-Prussian war in July. This continued into 1871 when France's defeat triggered the creation of a unified German Empire under the Prussian king as Kaiser Wilhelm I. Although not a political animal, like most Germans Raff had longed for an end to a Germany fractured into a legion of small states and its unification delighted him but as the years wore on he was to become disillusioned. In the words of his daughter Helene: "The older type of German idealism which lay deep within Raff found the dreadful humbug [...] quite repulsive; and he felt the same about the noisy, popular enthusiasm of those who suddenly found it expedient to be patriots – because Germany had become rich and powerful. He had envisaged a different sort of united Germany, one more noble-minded and not so ostentatious. The memorials and festivities typical of the period offended his cultural sensibility. Neither the educated of the period nor Raff himself had any particular churchly sensibility. However, Falk’s campaign against the Roman Catholic Church awakened his former attachment to her: when violence occurred, he called it persecution of Christians pure and simple, although he said he didn’t always agree with the actions taken to counter it. Besides, he was convinced that this attack upon the Church of Rome would lead to defeat – and he was right. Mind you, Raff never aired his views in public; no party was able to count him as one of their own. Having just once, as an immature youngster, got himself mixed up in political turmoil in Switzerland, the scope and consequences of which he couldn’t comprehend, was sufficient to put him off any type of political activity for life".

Towards the end of the war Raff wrote his Symphony No.4 Op.167. Unlike its predecessor the work had no programme, and this perhaps militated against it achieving quite the popular success which Im Walde continued to enjoy, but the Fourth Symphony was nonetheless very well received; the composer Rheinberger described it as “this magnificent work which I admire not only for all its merits, but for its noble melodiousness which, unfortunately, is rare these days.” 1871 saw the birth of other major pieces: the Fantasy Sonata for piano Op.168 and the Violin Concerto No.1 Op.161 shared Lisztian single-movement structures. The concerto was another work which was extravagantly praised, and retained its popularity for many years. Raff returned to the orchestral suite with Aus dem Suden (From the South), a five-movement work inspired by an Italian holiday. This delightfully melodious work was inexplicably shelved by Raff and never performed in his lifetime but was eventually published in 1884 as the Italian Suite WoO.35. Having had success with his first four piano suites, Raff continued the series with two more: a thoroughly romantic on one in G minor Op.162 (finished in 1870) and the other in G major Op.163, finished in 1871 and much more baroque in character. Smaller piano works occupied the rest of his time, apart from the long-promised orchestration of Wagner's Huldigungs-Marsch WoO.34A, reluctantly carried out at the urging of Wagner's publisher.

Illustration from an edition of Bürger's Lenore

At the very height of his powers and at last free to compose full-time, in 1872 Raff wrote a series of works in a variety of genres, all of which are amongst his most inspired creations. The most successful was undoubtedly his Symphony No.5 Lenore Op.177, a programme symphony based on Bürger's famous ballade. Its popularity quickly mirrored that of Im Walde and cemented Raff's position as the foremost symphonist of the time. Audiences thrilled to its depiction of the Gothic horror of Lenore's ride to the grave, and the third movement's catchy march became one of the most arranged of Raff's compositions. In chamber music both the Octet Op.176 and Sextet Op.178 quickly established themselves as works popular with both audiences and performers alike and the latter work in particular was hailed as a paragon of wit and sheer cleverness. Two lieder collections, the cycle Maria Stuart Op.172, based on the story of Mary Queen of Scots, and the Acht Gesänge (Eight Songs) Op.173 are amongst the best of Raff's vocal works and one song from the second set, No.8 Sie Still (Be Still), achieved a lasting popularity well beyond Raff's death. For the piano Raff wrote the half-hour long Variations on an Original Theme Op.179, a fiendishly difficult virtuoso piece mainly in 5/8 or 7/8 time, and at the other end of the skill continuum he completed the set of 30 fortschreitende Etüden (30 Progressive Etudes) WoO.36 for students. Amongst all these achievements, one failure stands out. Buoyed by the success of Dame Kobold, Raff finished work on a second comic opera, Die Parole (The Watchword) WoO.29 in 1872, but was unable to get the work performed despite some initial interest from Weimar. It remains unpublished and unperformed.

Raff's fame was spreading beyond Germany; in 1873 the renowned violinist Henri Vieuxtemps reported from Brussels on the total success that “the remarkable” Fourth Symphony had scored under his baton and when the Im Walde Symphony was performed in Spa in September that year Raff was sent an enormous wreath of gold vine leaves with gilded grapes. The Third and Fifth Symphonies were soon favourites in London and spread from there across the Atlantic to New York and beyond. Up until their advent, most of Raff's works had been premiered in Wiesbaden or other provincial cities, but Lenore's public premiere was in Berlin and of an 1874 performance of Im Walde which Raff conducted in Leipzig he wrote that “My colleagues went absolutely crazy and the whole audience was so thrilled that I can hardly remember anything like it.” Leopold Damrosch wrote to Raff from New York that “We’re overrun with Raff here; your symphonies and chamber music are as well known here as anything by Beethoven”. In 1876 the Philharmonic Society of London told him that his name and works “enjoy a glowing reputation here and are received enthusiastically”; they invited him to come and conduct one of his symphonies in person during their next London concert season, but Raff didn’t accept the invitation. He was made an honorary member of the Philharmonic Societies of New York and London, the Reale Istituto Musicale in Florence, the Società del Quartetto in Milan, the Società internationale d’Incorraggiamento delle Arti in Naples, the Cäcilien-Verein in Wiesbaden, the Verein der Liederfreunde in Königsberg and the Tonkünstlerverein in Dresden. He received gifts and awards from royalty and was made a member of orders of chivalry. He also received tributes and greetings of a more personal nature: people requested pictures of him (which were seldom granted as nothing was more difficult than getting Raff to have his photograph taken). Ivan Turgenev, after hearing Im Walde, sent Raff a recently published selection of his works, containing a personal dedication. The one-time “beggar musician” had become a celebrated composer, much acclaimed both at home and abroad.

Significant, well-received works continued to pour from Raff's fertile imagination in 1873. He maintained his mission to widen appreciation of J.S. Bach's music with his pioneering orchestration of the Chaconne for solo violin WoO.39, dedicated to the new York Philharmonic Society and soon to be emulated by other composers. The Suite for Violin and Orchestra Op.180 and the Piano Concerto Op.185 both proved to be highly popular, the latter championed by its dedicatee and Raff's great promoter Hans von Bülow. However, the two major chamber works he penned during the year suffered different fates: the Cello Sonata Op.183 was virtually ignored, whereas the Sinfonietta Op.188 for ten winds was an immediate and lasting success. Raff's highest hopes, though, were reserved for his Symphony No.6 Op.189 which wasn't premiered until November the next year. After the phenomenal success of the Im Walde and Lenore Symphonies the public and critics were eager for another programme symphony spread over a large canvas, but that wasn't what Raff gave them. The Sixth Symphony was on a smaller scale, similar in size to the Second and Fourth Symphonies and like them neither the movements nor the work itself bore a title, but it was burdened with the portentous alliterative motto: “Gelebt: gestrebt, gelitten, gestritten – Gestorben - Umworben” (Lived: struggled, suffered, fought—Died—Glorified). He thought it the best of his symphonies and its Berlin premiere went well but it was soon clear that the public were disappointed with it and critics were quick to diagnose a falling off in Raff's creative powers. For most of the year before the premiere, though, Raff had been hard at work during 1874: he produced a third orchestral suite (but only the second to be published) In ungarische Weise (in the Hungarian Style) Op.194, his First Cello Concerto Op.193, written for the great virtuoso Friedrich Grützmacher, and a series of three remarkable string quartets which shared Op.192 - No.6 Suite in älterer Form (Suite in Ancient Style), No.7 Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill) and No.8 Suite in Kanonform (Suite in Canon-form). The Seventh Quartet, a programmatic cycle, was particularly well received and one of its movements, Die Mühle (The Mill), was the subject of numerous arrangements for all sorts of ensembles, such was its popularity.

The motto of the Symphony No.6 Op.189

As 1875 began the critics' disappointment with the Sixth Symphony started to gather momentum and the old accusations of Raff being too facile, too unself-critical, of simply writing too much music resurfaced, but for now they spurred him on to begin work on a Seventh Symphony. A tribute to his Swiss homeland, In den Alpen Op.201 was a return to the large-scale programmatic scene painting format which had been so successful for Raff in Im Walde and Lenore and he had high hopes for it after it's predecessor's cool reception. Two other major orchestral scores occupied him that year: the Suite for Piano & Orchestra Op.200 and a fourth orchestral suite, the Thüringer (Thuringian) Suite WoO.45 which celebrated his wife's homeland around Weimar in western Saxony where he had spent five years working with Liszt. The Piano Suite was published the next year but, although it was performed with some success, the Thüringer Suite was only published posthumously with the order of its movements changed and retitled Aus Thüringen (From Thüringia). After what he would have regarded as another year at the height of his career, it no doubt came as a shock to Raff when the publisher of his Seventh Symphony wrote to him just before the work's premiere in Wiesbaden to say that he was disappointed with In den Alpen as Raff had "told [him] repeatedly that the material is even better than that of the Lenore”. It was the harbinger of a gradual decline of Raff's reputation as a composer which he felt to be quite unjustified. As his daughter Helene wrote: "This accusation hurt him deeply; indeed, he was incensed. He referred to the example of the great composers of the past and the astonishing amount of music they wrote. 'Mozart died young and left behind three hundred compositions. If there are weaker ones among them, does that mean that his stronger pieces suffer by comparison?' And on another occasion, he said: 'What these gentlemen should do is show me any piece of mine that isn’t up to scratch, compositionally speaking.' [ ...] The fact that he rarely had to wrestle with his musical material wasn’t something he thought he should be criticised for; he suspected those who composed laboriously of lacking any real powers of invention and he thought that waiting for inspiration was little more than a lack of self-discipline. Most of the time all he needed to do was to give concrete form to the outline that had already been in his mind for some time".

Although he was often still fêted when he made public appearances and many of his earlier works were as popular as ever, from 1876 onward Raff was aware that his reputation as a composer was under threat. Despite his high hopes, In den Alpen proved to be a disappointment to him; it just couldn’t match the impact made by his earlier programme symphonies, let alone surpass them. Goethe’s adage that “people often make us pay dearly for the pleasure that we have given them” was now beginning to apply to him but did not deter him from composition. Indeed, he planned an ambitious cycle of four symphonies, each one portraying one of the seasons. During the spring he quickly wrote the first of them Der Winter (The Winter) but it is clear that the criticism he was receiving had an impact on him and, perhaps recognising that it wasn't as strong a work as he had hoped, he shelved the piece. It went unperformed and unpublished during his lifetime, finally being published as his Symphony No.11 Op.214 in 1883. Undeterred, he began work on another symphony - No.8 Frühlingsklänge (Spring Sounds) Op.205 - which was completed during the summer and published in 1877. Frühlingsklänge went some way towards reviving his fortunes, but the days of Berlin or Leipzig premieres were over and the symphony was first performed in his home town of Wiesbaden. The cello virtuoso David Popper asked Raff to compose a concerto for him and Raff obliged but, once Popper received the work's manuscript, he did nothing with it and ignored Raff's requests for its return. Eventually a mutual acquaintance was able to restore it to Raff, who put the completed piece aside and it wasn't performed or published until 1997. Despite these difficulties and disappointments Raff managed to find time to compose three important chamber works. The most unusual was an extended programmatic work for violin and piano, his "Cyclic Tone Poem" Volker Op.203, the nine movements of which chart the traditional Nibelungen legend (also used by Wagner as the basis for his Ring cycle of operas). More conventional are the two Piano Quartets sharing Op.202 which were composed early in the year at the same time as Der Winter. Despite being large scale, ambitious pieces of clear quality neither seems to have made much of an impression.

Having reached the pinnacle of success at the start of the 1870s, by the time Raff's twentieth year in Wiesbaden was coming to a close he was conscious that his glory days might be fading. His daughter wrote: "It was evident that Raff had overtaxed his creative powers and was now beginning to suffer from a certain amount of exhaustion. This began to show in other aspects of his life. However, the concept of 'relaxation', being virtually foreign to him anyway as a remedy for his ills, was something he simply scorned. Even on trips intended to give him a rest he couldn’t be persuaded to relax, especially if he was staying in one place for more than a day or two. It was only when he was continually travelling around without much of a rest anywhere that he didn’t ask for any manuscript paper. The state of agitation which became evident was, of course, exacerbated by the occasional spiteful attacks made upon him by those who had previously begrudged him his growing number of successes and were now smugly announcing his decline. Besides these individuals there were also quite enough others who, while respecting his artistic talent, complained about the fact that he wrote too much music and disapproved of Raff’s idiosyncratic musical genius – his ability to look two ways at once. [ … ] As a composer of programme music, he was one of the innovators; yet, as time went on, his ideas on form drew him closer and closer to the great classical composers whom he so greatly admired. [ ... ] He kept his distance from both of the great musical factions of his day – his old comrades from the Liszt-Wagner circle and also the supporters of Brahms and Schumann; and so this great individualist found that there weren’t very many people who were prepared to stand up for him when his star seemed to be on the wane. As a person who always met the attacks made upon him head-on, Raff defended those compositions of his which were now being received less positively in the face of all the criticism, even though he had the highest possible regard for the virtues of compositional skill and considered that his own skill remained undiminished. He further strengthened his case by adducing the moral argument that, as a man of no great means, he had to work to support his family. Of course, it would also have been better from a financial point of view for him to have left longer gaps between the publication dates of his larger-scale compositions and so demand higher fees for them. However, Raff just didn’t possess the requisite business acumen to do this. [ ... ] and so this was how he lived his life, working incessantly and relying on good fortune to see him through”. As 1876 ended he was not to know that the new year would bring a dramatic improvement to his fortunes.

The final episode in Raff's story: Frankfurt 1877-82.