Raff song identification

[eschiss1]

In a 1903 issue of "The Etude" (published by Theodore Presser), scanned in by Google (visible online in the US... I can make a PDF of the Raff to upload to Mediafire and will probably be doing so for IMSLP anyway once I know what it is!...), there is a "Song of the Troubadour" by "J. Raff" (Joachim or Joseph Kaspar??) for piano, or arranged for piano, by Preston Ware Orem.  I don't recognize this work though it may be well-known (to us at any rate...) and I may just not know it... it's in A-flat major, starting with arpeggiated eighth notes Larghetto progressing to a repeated "Poco più moto" section. (It starts on page 10 of a music insert after the Volume 21, No.8, August 1903 issue.)

Thanks much in advance for any help
(If you'd rather not help because of objection to IMSLP, well, that's rather offtopic and can be taken as read, so take it as read-and-said.)

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks Eric. I wondered if it might be from (Joachim) Raff's late song cycle Blondel de Nesle op.211 of 1880, which is all about Richard the Lionheart's troubadour friend, but there's nothing in that set which fits your description. I'll have a look at the other songs (there are over a hundred more, of course, this being Raff) and will get back to you, but an upload of some sort would be very much appreciated.

[Mark Thomas]

Eric, I wonder if the song is Ständchen (Serenade, in English) WoO.21 of  1859? It was one of Raff's great hits in his day and is a Larghetto in A flat. It was subjected to umpteen arrangements - there's even a historic recording of an arrangement for tenor, violin and piano featuring John McCormack and Fritz Kreisler. The Library of Congress digital collection has a copy of the score with English words. It's downloadable here, if you'd like to compare it with your piece. Nothing else seems to fit the bill and Ständchen was a well known work, so it's likely to have been in many compilation volumes.

[eschiss1]

I'll download that and I'll soon get to uploading the Orem arrangement also. His work might have begun as a piano piece, to make matters worse, and as I know might have not been by _either_ Raff, knowing what one finds in "arrangements" then and now, but hopefully...

[eschiss1]

Fairly sure they're not the same unless Orem did a lot of editing/arrangement/variation. Going to upload soon, then.
Have uploaded to Mediafire. Fairly well sure it's PD tout court, so I hope it's alright if I simply direct link from here? -
Mediafire link.

[Mark Thomas]

I can't get very far with this, Eric, always assuming that it's Joachim Raff rather than his upstate New York brother, "Professor" Joseph.

Th only Troubadour in Raff's output, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is Blondel de Nesle about whom Raff wrote an eponymous song cycle, his op.211 of 1880. The songs are composed as if sung by Blondel. The sixth song "Before Jerusalem" is a Larghetto, but isn't in A flat. I have the text but don't have the score to compare with your piano piece, I'm afraid.

Only three pieces in Raff's piano output are both marked Larghetto and are in A flat:

Album Lyrique op.17 no.7 Nocturne
I know this piece and it isn't your score.

Blätter & Blumen op.135 no.2 Cypress
I don't have the score to this piece, but it's named after a tree, nothing to do with troubadours.

Orientales op.175 no.6
I don't have the score to this unnamed piece.

So, assuming it's Joachim Raff's work and it's published elsewhere than in this collection then it could be either of the two latter pieces, although my money would be on the one from the Orientales set as there seems nothing wrong with the title "Cypress". In the US the Eastmann School's Sibley Music Library at the University of Rochester has both scores, so I don't know if you're able to purloin a scan of the opening page of each?

[David Campbell]

The piece in question is the Nocturne in A-flat from opus 17:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Album_lyrique,_Op.17_(Raff,_Joachim)

Dave

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, David, and welcome to UC. That's very helpful. I'm galled that I missed it myself, but I guess that I was looking for a Larghetto and Eric's edition had not only given it a spurious title but changed the tempo indication too. It, and the rest of the Album Lyrique, has been recorded by Tra Nguyen for the third volume in her series of Raff piano music, due out on Grand Piano this November.

[eschiss1]

Ah, thanks. I think I'll still upload the edition, spurious tempo (I find that at least common with modern editions of Baroque works, but then, also with newer editions of more recent works too...) and all. Hopefully the rest of the op.17 is around somewheres (in hiding no doubt! )

Actually, we still don't know, according to Cypressdome's notes on the Bassford edition for Schirmer, if it's from the 1845 or 1849 Album, since all we have is the Bassford and Orem editions of -one- of the pieces... (and that they're the same piece just differently edited), not the First Editions- though maybe ... hrm.  I wonder if Hofmeister may be helpful here, or - I forget if Raff's catalog is thematic. Hrm. No, guessing not, or we wouldn't be having this guessing game in the first place

[David Campbell]

I'm glad to be of some help.  I knew the piece from the two volume Schirmer compilation "Selected Pieces for Pianoforte."  (Both volumes are available from Sibley: http://hdl.handle.net/1802/18935). 

Dave

[Mark Thomas]

Eric wrote:

Actually, we still don't know, according to Cypressdome's notes on the Bassford edition for Schirmer, if it's from the 1845 or 1849 Album

Actually, we do know. Having arrogantly asserted in an earlier reply:

Album Lyrique op.17 no.7 Nocturne: I know this piece and it isn't your score

I've now listened to Tra Nguyen's yet to be released recording of it properly, rather than relying on my obviously faulty memory, and compared it with the existing IMSLP score so helpfully identified by David. It is definitely the same work. As Tra's recording is of the 1849 Album Lyrique then you can allocate the IMSLP score to the 1849 set with confidence. According to the definitive 1888 catalogue of Raff's music (unfortunately not a thematic catalogue), it was published with the tempo designation Larghetto. I'll try and be more careful next time!

By the way, according to the same catalogue, the 1845 composition is an entirely different work. I don't know of a source for it as all the libraries which I've researched have the 1849 set which is endorsed by Raff with the words: Nouvelle édition, entièrement transformée par l'auter, the same phrase which he used for his recompositions of about ten early piano works for Breitkopfs in the late 1870s and early 1880s, including the Piano Sonata. It keeps the former set's nine numbers, the first book of each is three Réveries and the third of each two Nocturnes, but otherwise the titles, keys and tempi of the numbers are different. Of course, we can never be sure that the sets are indeed completely different until we can see scores for both sets and I have been unable to find a source for the original 1845 set. Why Raff rewrote the Album Lyrique after only four years isn't known. I looked into this issue in some depth whilst researching the insert notes for the upcoming Grand Piano CD (on which it will appear) and came up with nothing, apart from my suspicion that at least the last two numbers in the "1849" set were written much later. The five volumes of the final Album Lyrique, despite allegedly having been written in 1849 weren't published until 1874-1877 and those later pieces have all the hallmarks of mature Raff.

[eschiss1]

I noticed that when browsing through Hofmeister (the not published until the 1870s part, that is...)
Thanks!