Helene Raff’s "Leaves from Life’s Tree"

[Peter1953]

Mark, what a wonderful news on New Year's Day! Helene Raff's autobiography published in a translation by Alan. I haven't hesitated for a second and ordered the book.
Thank you both very much for your efforts. I'm sure it's a must-buy for all Raffians!

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for the order, Peter! Alan's translation is superb and it's a very entertaining read. There should be a couple more Raff-related publications available during 2011 with any luck.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I've just done the same - can't wait. Best New Year's gift for ages.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Me too!

Hope the Raff.org doesn't run out of stock!

Peter

[petershott@btinternet.com]

The postie this morning delivered my copy of 'Leaves from Life's Tree' - arrived in record speed having only been ordered a few days ago. Thank you postie. But far far more significantly: thank you both so very much, Alan and Mark, for giving us this book. It is a beautifully produced volume, and with its 334 pages complete with sharp informative footnotes, quite a chunky one. And although less important than its content, an immensely attractive outside cover. Gosh, my best present to myself for a long time (and incidentally a very small and modest cost given the nature of it).

This is clearly not one just for Raff enthusiastics (which ought to include everybody!). Flicking through the pages it is immensely rich on many many aspects of German culture in the latter half of the 19th century - which for me is by far the richest period of musical composition and activity. The pages of the book bristle with an amazing list of names, events and movements. Real and dedicated scholarship clearly lies behind the making of this book. I've just had a quick whizz through its final chapter (no way at all to treat a book!) leading up to the collapse of Germany in 1918. Some overwhelming and catastrophic events are described in such detail, and the chapter succeeds brilliantly in conveying what it must have been like to have lived throughout it all. Alan's translation is wonderfully fluent and idiomatic. First impression is that the book is a stunning and major achievement.

I am now itching to put up the shutters, ignore the outside world, turn off the CD player and thoroughly immerse myself in the book over the next few days. Hence the good news: there are unlikely to be any of my frivolous postings over the next few days in which I disgrace myself by saying rude things about Mozart (but I just couldn't help that: however hard I try I continue to find his music unpalatable!).

Thank you both, Alan and Mark, for the book and for all the immense labours that have obviously gone into it. It is a compulsory purchase for anyone who passes through this site. I also hope the book draws the attention of anyone dealing with the history of German culture: every university with a European history department should have a couple of copies in the university library.

Now to start reading properly!

Peter

[Alan Howe]

Thank you, Peter. Very kind of you.

[Pengelli]

It sounds like a livelier read than that book about Bantock,by his daughter. So dry,I need a drink of water. And I don't mean dry like Bob Hope or that Butler in the 70's tv comedy 'Soap'!

[Mark Thomas]

Peter, that's very kind of you. I do hope that you enjoy reading it. Alan has done a wonderful job of the translation, allowing Helene Raff's very individual voice to come through loud and clear. It's a fascinating portrait of the artistic life in the brief span of the German Empire, but one thing Alan and I are keen to get across in this Forum, though, is that it is Helene Raff's story, not her father's. The first quarter of her autobiography features Raff and his musical world very heavily, but thereafter Helene launches out on her own account into the artistic and literary worlds. She did, of course, write a biography of her father too...

[mbhaub]

And we want a translation of that, too! Maybe some grad student in German studies could do it for a thesis or something. But we need it.

[Alan Howe]

And we want a translation of that, too! Maybe some grad student in German studies could do it for a thesis or something. But we need it.

Well, you never know...

[Mark Thomas]

 

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Ah, just shows how impoverished language can be! Music, or in this case, a mere symbol can express so much more. And its reception so welcome!

Peter

[Peter1953]

My copy arrived today. Can't hardly wait to start reading this book, with its beautiful, striking outside cover (whose creative idea was this?)

[Alan Howe]

The presentation of the book was entirely Mark's doing. He even took the cover photo himself.

[Josh]

I just sent in for a copy of the book today, and I can't wait for it to get here.  This is just so absolutely fantastic.  This is about as thrilling for me as finally getting to read Dittersdorf's autobiography in English; I'd been pining for that for about a decade, but I'm about equally excited by this one.

Just on a whim, I looked up two Wikipedia articles this morning: 1877 in music and 1937 in music.  1937 was the year before this book was initially released, right?  1877 is fifty years prior, when Helene Raff was about 12 years old or so.  I'm sure she had clean memories of the music world from that time, with a better awareness than the vast majority of European residents could have had... for obvious reasons.  Her father's Violin Concerto #2 was completed that year.  In 1937, prior to this book's publication, Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta débuted.  That's quite a change!  We go from 1877 with Sullivan's The Sorcerer, to 1937 and Berg's Lulu.  1877 witnessed the birth of Ernő Dohnányi, while in 1937 Phillip Glass entered the world.

I don't know why, but I find this pretty fascinating.  Makes me really wish that Gossec or J.P.E. Hartmann had written about that, how different things were in music from their youth to their later years.