Title: Rafael Joseffy Music and Personal Papers, 1812-1915
Arrangement
The collection is arranged in three series: Series 1) Personal Papers, Series 2) Original Music Manuscripts, and Series 3) Personal Piano Music Library. Series 2 includes manuscripts written in Joseffy's hand, including chapters from his method books and research from the School of Advanced Piano Playing. PS refers to piano score. Series 3 is arranged alphabetically by composer. Individual titles are listed in the description with the format: Title, arranger/editor if applicable, (Publisher), and date.
Biographical Note
Rafael Joseffy was born in Hunfal, Hungary on July 3, 1852 and died in New York on June 25, 1915. His youth was spent in Miskolcz, where he began to study the piano at the age of eight. After further studies in Budapest he entered the Leipzig Conservatory (1866), where he was taught chiefly by E.F. Wenzel, though he also had a few lessons from Moscheles. From 1868 to 1870 he studied with Tausig in Berlin, and he spent the summers of 1869 and 1870 in Weimar, taking lessons with Franz Liszt. He first performed publicly in Berlin in 1870; soon he was giving concerts in most of the large European cities. In a review of 1874 the Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick admired his brilliant technique but found his playing cold.
Joseffy made his American debut in New York in 1879, playing concertos by Chopin and Liszt in addition to solo items, and then settled in the USA. He toured with Theodore Thomas and his orchestra, and gave many recitals, being one of the first to perform Brahms' works regularly. Joseffy received an endorsement from Steinway Pianos in 1891, but failed to perform or endorse the product during that engagement. According to historian Mark Radice, critics noted that he suffered from performance anxiety, but he was also overshadowed by rival pianists like Ignacy Jan Paderewski. From 1888 to 1906 he taught the piano at the National Conservatory in New York.
In his youth he composed some salon pieces, a set of lieder and numerous arrangements of works by Bach, Haydn, Chopin and others; but he was much better known for his editions of Chopin's works (15 volumes) and of studies by Czerny, Henselt, Schlozer and Moscheles; he also wrote a valuable of School of Advanced Piano Playing (New York, 1902). While some of Joseffy's manuscript scores burned in a fire in 1895, several scores and methods survived. These materials were donated to the Music and Performing Arts Library at Illinois by Marie Joseffy in 1944.
Sources:Grove Music Online
Email us about these papers
Print this information