Joseph Joachim Raff was born on 27 May 1822 in the
small town of Lachen, on the shores of lake Zürich in
Switzerland. He was a good violinist, but only a
competent pianist and by no means a virtuoso, although
he had given a couple of recitals whilst in his early
20s in Switzerland. He didn't compose at the piano
either, preferring to use it only to check a passage
once he had composed it. Nonetheless, his first 59
compositions were for the piano and he continued to
write many pieces for the ins...(+)
Joseph Joachim Raff was born on 27 May 1822 in the
small town of Lachen, on the shores of lake Zürich in
Switzerland. He was a good violinist, but only a
competent pianist and by no means a virtuoso, although
he had given a couple of recitals whilst in his early
20s in Switzerland. He didn't compose at the piano
either, preferring to use it only to check a passage
once he had composed it. Nonetheless, his first 59
compositions were for the piano and he continued to
write many pieces for the instrument even once he had
established his reputation in much larger forms. By a
large margin, Raff wrote more music for solo piano than
for any other medium.
By 1868, the year in which he composed the first of the
pieces which were eventually going to become his
Dreizig fortschreitende Etüden WoO.36 (Thirty
Progressive Etudes), Raff's career was taking off. His
First Symphony had won a major prize and received great
acclaim, his chamber and choral works were attracting
attention and he seems to have had no difficulty in
attracting publishers. Yet despite this success he was
still working as a teacher and a critic and it was
still necessary for him to write popular piano pieces
to keep money flowing into the household. He was a born
educator; for many years he taught piano at two girls
schools in Wiesbaden and later his composition class at
the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt was greatly admired.
He also had a ready pen, writing music criticism
through his life until he took up the Frankfurt post.
It is surprising, therefore, that he never wrote a
musical textbook of any sort and his piano etudes are
for the most part wholly artistic in conception and not
intended as pianistic exercises.
During Raff's lifetime, the thirty etudes were spread
over Damm's three books in their three editions. Whilst
Raff no doubt thought of the first 27 as a coherent
set, as they appeared together in the second edition of
the Übungsbuch, it's not known whether he felt that
the final three, published earlier in the
Kunstfertigheit should also belong to the set. In any
event, just a year after Raff died, and having in the
meantime shed his pseudonym and set up his own
publishing house, Steingräber published the complete
set as 30 Progressive Etudes in October 1883. Clearly
the title was not Raff's, although it is appropraite.
The set is "progressive" not so much in the difficulty
of each work, but in the move from the more
straightforward, focussed exercises of the first
fifteen to the employment of the techniques learned
from them in the larger, more developed and
artistically richer works which particularly
characterise the final ten pieces.
Source: Raff.org
(https://www.raff.org/music/detail/piano/30prog.htm).
Although originally created for Piano, I created this
Interpretation of the Moderato from 30 Progressive
Etudes (WoO. 36 No. 3) for Oboe & Classical Guitar.