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!
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.
I've just done the same - can't wait. Best New Year's gift for ages.
Me too!
Hope the Raff.org doesn't run out of stock!
Peter
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
Thank you, Peter. Very kind of you.
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'!
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...
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.
Quote from: mbhaub on Friday 07 January 2011, 23:53
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...
;)
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
My copy arrived today. Can't hardly wait to start reading this book, with its beautiful, striking outside cover (whose creative idea was this?)
The presentation of the book was entirely Mark's doing. He even took the cover photo himself.
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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1877_in_music) and 1937 in music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
My order is in!
So I've seen. Thanks!
Well, I look forward to reading Frau Raff's story - particularly since I was so taken with her lovely verses to "Die Sterne" - evoking the beauty of the stars and the heavens. Just wonderful!
Fraulein, I'm afraid...
Technically, yes, Mark. But women, whether married or unmarried, are often referred to as "Frau", so as not to disclose their marital status...
Hum! Not going to quarrel with a Germanist whose translation is currently giving me so much pleasure. But I would have thought the Helene I'm reading would prefer the 'Fraulein'?
And, heavens, the people she either knew or encountered!! Just about everyone from Hans von Bulow to a notorious man who won't be named but who had a dog called 'Wolf' (although, of course, he pops up later in her life and outside the chronology of the book). Truly fascinating stuff, unputdownable, and I haven't been so caught up in a non-fictional work for some years. Characters and events leap vividly off the page.
The footnotes (which I guess are Mark's work?) are clear, precise and enormously helpful - and what a relief they didn't appear as endnotes. My only 'quibble' (and hardly a complaint) is that there is no Index. Many many hours of hugely tiresome work I know, but it would have been especially useful.
Peter
The point about the lack of index is well made, Peter. The problem was simply the huge extra amount of work that would have meant.
The footnotes were essentially a joint effort, although Mark is the Raff expert, of course.
Of course I'm very happy to bow to Alan on the question of "Frau." As for an index, Peter, like the footnotes and photos there was none in the original book and we recognise now that one would have been helpful, although a lot more work. It's something we'll bear in mind for future projects, you may be sure.
Quote from: Alan Howe on Sunday 16 January 2011, 23:00
Technically, yes, Mark. But women, whether married or unmarried, are often referred to as "Frau", so as not to disclose their marital status...
Yup - 'tis true, especially in the last 15 years or so. I ran a NYC company the sole shareholder of which was a large corporation based in Munich. Spent a lot of time in Germany - and was careful, particularly in later days, to use "Frau" when I was unsure of the lady's status.
Very careful, I might add! :P
Learn something new every day,eh,Alan/Mark!
Peter.'a notorious man who won't be named,who owns a dog called Wolf'?!!! You keep letting nuggets like that out,and I'll have to order the book too (to find out!).
My parents had a German couple stay with them years ago. I think everyone called them Mr and Mrs!
Come on, Pengelli - not like you to fail to jump at clues.
I tantalise you with yet more clues: my 'notorious' man was especially attached to his mother, but feared his father who often beat him. When a child he became interested in battles and military history, largely as a result of looking at picture books of the Franco-Prussian war. Having been born in the same year, 1889, as Ludwig Wittgenstein he at one time attended the same school as the great future philosopher and may indeed have played conkers with him (or the German equivalent!) in the school playground. However he got himself expelled from school in Steyr following a drunken escapade. He served on the Western Front in WW1, and was twice decorated, but never promoted. After the war he lived in extreme poverty, struggling to make an income from painting. Later in life he claimed in his account of his life that Frederick the Great, Martin Luther and Richard Wagner were pretty much on a par, all being courageous warriors, great statesman and social reformers. Oh, and he had a rather curious relationship with his niece who died, apparently in suicide, whilst holding his gun, but the precise facts will now never be known. And if, as you certainly should, buy Helene Raff's book very ably translated by Alan and scrupulously edited by Mark, you'll read in the Postscript that Helene attended a dinner party in 1923 where she met my notorious man whose name I resolved not to mention on this site.
Got it? And I shall be chased off this site by Alan for offering a post that not only is 'off-thread' but has nothing at all to do with Raff or music itself. But fun it is teasing you!
Peter
You left out the part about his having been gassed while on the front, and having some rather ominous...er..."epiphanies" while recuperating.
And I doubt you'll even merit a stern warning from Alan, or anybody else here. Provided, that is, that Pengelli orders the book!
Yeah, order the book! Go on, you know you want to... ;)
Mark - book well and promptly received. Many thanks. I now look forward to enjoying the history.
Are there any plans to translate and publish Helene Raff's biography of her father, "Joachim Raff: ein Lebensbild"? I certainly hope so as I'm greatly enjoying Leaves From Life's Tree and would love to learn about heretofore unknown details about Raff's life.
I'm really pleased that you are enoying "Leaves". Yes, there are indeed plans to produce Helene's life of papa as a companion volume. But don't hold your breath!
The 'Mad King of Bavaria?'
Eh?