Raff and the 19th Century Symphony

[Alan Howe]

I want to float an idea and would welcome forum members' comments:

The place of Raff in the development of the Symphony in the 19th century is badly misunderstood and certainly seriously underestimated. In my view, the true role that he played arose from his refusal fully to embrace either the aesthetic of the New Germans or that of the conservatives. Thus, in his symphonic output, his radicalism is often countered or balanced by his classicism (or vice versa), and often in the same work (e.g. in Lenore). This leads to misjudgments of his symphonies: they are often put in the same category as those of thoroughgoing radicals such as Berlioz or Liszt. And then those works without any programmatic content (i.e. Symphonies 2 and 4) simply don't fit the thesis. In reality, what Raff was doing - along with Draeseke, Bruckner, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky - was synthesising the two tendencies in a very personal way so that the Symphony remained recognisable in form, but became greatly extended in range of expression and colour.

Carl Dahlhaus talks about the re-birth of the Symphony post-Schumann as dating from the appearance of Brahms 1; however, there are two objections to this:

1. There are signs of significant developments in the symphonic field among the conservatives pre-Brahms , e.g. the symphonies by Grimm, Dietrich and Volkmann.

2. The symphonies of Brahms were essentially a dead-end anyway. What the Symphony needed was the injection of radical elements - harmony, orchestration, colour, expression, etc. - in order for there to be development of the form post-Schumann. And in this Raff played a vital role...   

[eschiss1]

hrm. Brahms' symphonies - the 4th at least - continue to have some influence (Rooke mentions it as a or the source for his decision to use a passacaglia in the finale of his 2nd symphony (in C) of just a few years ago; not sure if it influenced Hindemith's or Britten's choices to do the same in theirs e.g. - tend to doubt it. (Those unlike the Rooke, like the passacaglias in many mid-20th-century American symphonies too, like the whole more or less??? of Schuman's 6th symphony, may have more to do with a reawakening generally of interest in the Baroque under a sort of general name of Neo-classicism (but not exactly).)

Not sure what reasonably well-known symphonies concluded with a passacaglia in the Romantic era prior to the Brahms. (Agreed, some influence does not contradict mostly-a-dead-end, on the other - hrm. ... )
I'd agree that Raff's semi-programmatic symphonies had some progeny both in the United States (Hadley's symphonies, in some weak sense) and nearer by Klughardt's Lenore, and nearer to Brahms' circle and in some weak sense Gernsheim's Miriam; though I can't help thinking that Spohr's 4th (etc., and similar works...) are somewhere in the ancestry of such a plan, and not to be left out.

[chill319]

If I understand the gist of your argument, Alan, I quite agree that a tremendous disservice is done to composers and listeners alike when serious music from the second half of the nineteenth century is jammed perforce into one or another tired category born out of bygone aesthetic struggles. Not only Hanslick and his ilk but also Wagner and his youthful followers were guilty of a rhetoric and a pedantry which have their roots in the reception and contemplation of art but which, by their very nature, can have nothing to do with the creative impulse that actually produces art, great and good. A much more tolerant atmosphere -- though not one whit less idealistic -- seems to have prevailed in Liszt's circle during the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. And from anecdotal  evidence, I find broader, less confrontational musical sympathies among many other composers of that era.

So when your keen and catholic ears hear Raff, Draeseke, and others amalgamating practices of the Leipzig school (here simply a term of convenience) with those of the New German school, I believe you've got the big picture exactly right. This is an important point, well worth arguing. However, I would beware of expecting most other composers of the later 19th-century to differ fundamentally, to fall neatly into one or another musical camp. I think that the majority of later nineteenth-century composers, like Draeseke, Raff, and their elite peers, are frequently misunderstood.

To get a true picture of any composer, one must consider their characteristic treatment of numerous musical parameters. Among these I would include melody (motif and line), rhythm, phrasing, local harmonic progressions, structural harmony, texture (including counterpoint), dynamics, narrative structure, and psychological verisimilitude. What I find again and again is that virtually all composers are more creative with respect to some parameters and less creative with respect to others. In his sonata forms, Grieg, for instance, is advanced in his treatment of melody, local harmonic progressions, texture, and psychological verisimilitude, but conservative in his treatment of phrasing, structural harmony, and narrative structure. Schoenberg, who wrote the essay "Brahms, the Progressive," certainly did not consider his forebear's symphonies a dead end. The last movement of the first is an extraordinary structure, perhaps more like a tone poem than a conventional symphonic movement. Brahms, I would argue, is advanced in his treatment of phrasing, structural harmony, and narrative structure, but conservative in his treatment of texture, local progressions, and psychological verisimilitude.

Going back to the earlier nineteenth century, it is interesting to see Mendelssohn's incorporation of picturesque narrative devices and musical quotation in symphonies 3,4, and 5. Although he was no doubt intimately familiar with the score of Beethoven's Pastorale, Mendelssohn's long suppression or gestation of  his symphonic scores suggests that he was conflicted in the 1830s and 1840s about the amalgamation of narrative music and binary forms in a way that Liszt or Raff, say, were not in the 1870s. Schumann, who was more conservative than Mendelssohn in this respect, was in his late works quite advanced in his motivic-melodic constructions, less alluringly perhaps than Wagner in Tristan but similarly rigorous.

In sum, looking at the music rather than what people were saying about the music, I see later nineteenth-century musicians expanding the boundaries of music together on many fronts, but not all in the same ways at the same time. That some of these fronts were appropriated by aesthetic camps is undeniable, and it can certainly be helpful to describe unknown music in terms that synthesize known reference points. In the end, it will be the cogency of Raff's creations, or Draeseke's, that will win the day.

[Mark Thomas]

Picking up on chill's very valuable points, I'd just like to return to Raff for a moment. Alan's characterisation of his musical persona as balancing radicalism (from his Lisztian heritage) and, for want of a better word, classicism is entirely correct and it was at the core of his artistic outlook. Of course, this sometimes gives rise to some anachronistic juxtapositions when he is unable to do this effectively. His symphonies in particular are littered with fugues for example, some of them highly effective and musically appropriate, others well integrated but essentially incongruous in the surround musical context.

Chill's point in his third paragraph about composers not being progressive to the same degree across all aspects of their compositional craft is very well made.  What is fascinating about Raff is that his bipolarity deepened as he reached the end of his career. He became both more "classical" in his sparer orchestration and his treatment of melody and harmony (so that he could almost be seen as a precursor of the neo-classicals) and much more radical in his approach to structure.

This trend isn't so easy to spot in the symphonies. One has to look at the Eleventh, one of the least satisfactory IMHO, which was left by Raff  unpublished and unperformed on his death. In fact it was the eighth to be written, the first, not the last of the four seasons symphonies. Whatever its imperfections it certainly exhibits a radical departure from its predecessors in the spareness of its orchestration and the comparative radicalism of its structure within the conventional four movements. The musicologist and composer Avrohom Leichtling theorises that Raff realised that such a gear change would be misunderstood at a time when he was being criticised in the wake of poor receptions for the 6th and 7th symphonies and so he put it to one side and used the next three seasons symphonies to gradually change his style so that Der Winter wouldn't come as such a surprise. I'm not sure that's the whole picture, but certainly the Tenth Symphony (the last he wrote) is amongst his most successful and one of his shortest, too. As is often the case with Raff, though, nothing now survives to document the truth, but I suspect that he recognised that in Der Winter he sketched out the path he wanted to follow, but that the work itself needed a radical overhaul before it merited inclusion in his cycle. If it wasn't going to be the first symphony in the cycle, it would have to be the last and the poor man obviously wasn't expecting to die at 60.

For the way things might have progressed symphonically we should look to two non-symphonic works: the Prelude to Shakespeare's Macbeth and the oratorio Welt Ende - Gericht - Neue Welt, which has a series of four orchestral mini-tone poems illustrating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In both Raff uses his new, sparer orchestral palette to tremendous effect, especially so in Macbeth in which the ghoulish passages depicting the Three Witches are especially neo-classical in sound. Structurally, the oratorio's tone poems are marvels of concision and compression - a huge contrast with the sometimes prolix Raff of An das Vaterland or Im Walde, whilst the structure of Macbeth has been compared, again by Avrohom Leichtling, to a film score; it's kaleidoscopic passages, built from a series of leitmotifs but often lasting only a few bars, truncated and dovetailed together in an extraordinary anticipation of 20th century techniques.

[Alan Howe]

Very many thanks to Eric, Kit and Mark for their extremely enlightening comments on this intriguing topic.

I am certain in my own mind that Kit's analysis is correct. Many composers in the latter part of the nineteenth century were attempting some sort of synthesis of the more radical and more conservative musical notions of the day. Thus, although colouristic devices had been used post-Beethoven by composers such as Spohr and Mendelssohn, it wasn't until the influences of Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner began to be absorbed that this synthesis (or various syntheses) became apparent in the symphonic compositions of certain composers in the 1860/70s - among whom I would cite Raff, Draeseke, Bruckner, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky in particular (but please feel free to add!).

I also find it extremely helpful to have my attention drawn to the finales of Brahms 1 and 4. I have often marvelled at the loose structure of the last movement of the 1st Symphony - it is indeed akin to a tone poem in feel and structure! And the passacaglia last movement of No.4 represents both a glance back to the classical past and innovation in terms of a symphonic finale - an attempt to solve the knotty finale problem through the renewal of a classical form. BTW as an aside I have also often thought that one of Brahms' major contributions was in the realm of rhythm.

But back to Raff. Historically, he just didn't fit into any one camp, indeed he himself was determined not to fit in. Add to this his aversion to self-publicity (he wouldn't allow his own compositions to be played at the conservatory of which he was in charge), and you have a recipe for the oblivion into which his compositions quickly fell after his death. Gradually, however, his role in musical history is being revised as his compositions are re-discovered. Along with Draeseke, he may well occupy his rightful place sometime soon.

Finally, I wonder also whether the tendency to examine composers in isolation from their predecessors, contemporaries and successors is responsible for the failure to understand them properly. While it is helpful, indeed essential to have studies of the symphonies of particular composers, Raff included, sight is soon lost - it seems to me - of the bigger picture. So for me the full story of the Symphony in the 19th century has yet to be written...

[Mark Thomas]

What we need is for someone to write an open-minded study of the German symphony in Dalhaus' fallow period - from the death of Schumann to the advent of Brahms' First and maybe another ten-fifteen years beyond. It really is a fallacy, in my view, that Brahms' wonderful work reawakened interest in the symphony in Germany. That's a modern rewriting of history in the light of what subsequently happened, rather than how it was seen at the time. A classic case of history being written by the victors.

The late Peter Brown's monumental multi-volume study of the symphony (The Symphonic Repertoire) is excellent in many respects. He accords Raff's eleven surviving symphonies 112 pages and Spohr's nine even more space, but he does commit Alan's sin of looking at these, and most other composers he covers, in isolation . In the case of Raff and Spohr in particular, he also perpetuates outmoded value judgements whilst refreshingly giving full credit for each man's influence on his contemporaries and younger generations.

[JimL]

I also find it extremely helpful to have my attention drawn to the finales of Brahms 1 and 4. I have often marvelled at the loose structure of the last movement of the 1st Symphony - it is indeed akin to a tone poem in feel and structure! And the passacaglia last movement of No.4 represents both a glance back to the classical past and innovation in terms of a symphonic finale - an attempt to solve the knotty finale problem through the renewal of a classical form. BTW as an aside I have also often thought that one of Brahms' major contributions was in the realm of rhythm.

As far as the finale of Brahms' 1st is concerned, I participated in a classroom analysis of its formal structure in college 30+ years ago.  It really isn't that complicated, and has some formal precedent in the finale of Schumann's 2nd, among others.  Brahms uses what some call "sonatina" form, but expanded into a massive structure, with some elements of sonata-rondo.  Additionally, there is an extended slow introduction which introduces all of the principal motives from which the subsequent themes are constructed, and furthermore, provides musical points of articulation.  What you have, in a nutshell, is a sonata structure wherein the development follows, rather than precedes the reprise of the first subject, followed by a coda which reviews the principal material in a speeded-up tempo.  Very ingeniously constructed, but not that formally innovative.

[Alan Howe]

As far as the finale of Brahms' 1st is concerned, I participated in a classroom analysis of its formal structure in college 30+ years ago.  It really isn't that complicated, and has some formal precedent in the finale of Schumann's 2nd, among others.  Brahms uses what some call "sonatina" form, but expanded into a massive structure, with some elements of sonata-rondo.  Additionally, there is an extended slow introduction which introduces all of the principal motives from which the subsequent themes are constructed, and furthermore, provides musical points of articulation.  What you have, in a nutshell, is a sonata structure wherein the development follows, rather than precedes the reprise of the first subject, followed by a coda which reviews the principal material in a speeded-up tempo.  Very ingeniously constructed, but not that formally innovative.

That's extremely helpful, Jim. Thanks. A. Peter Brown calls it "an irregular rondo": I guess it's the irregularity of it that strikes me so forcibly...