This work was written during Raff's early years in Weisbaden, a city he had relocated to in 1856, having departed the less hospitable Weimar, where he had served as a sort of protégée to the more successful and admired Liszt. The Cavatina for violin and piano was the third and most popular of a set of six short chamber pieces. After his death in 1882 Raff's music became largely ignored, except for this one little gem, a work most violin virtuosos kept before the public.

The piece opens with a sweetly melancholy theme on the violin, the piano offering gentle, almost consoling harmonies in chords. The melody rises from the lower into the middle and higher ranges of the violin, especially as it is developed and as it takes on tension and a greater sense of yearning. Midway through the music exudes this growing restiveness, but the violin, never yielding the thematic reins to the piano, maintains its singing character, rising higher and higher to resolve accrued tensions. Near the close the music passionately builds toward its final climactic moment, only to produce a relatively peaceful resolution and one subsequent, albeit languid appearance of the melody.

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