Seventy-five miles south-east of Vienna, and about halfway to Budapest, lies the town of Györ. In Roman days the town was named Arabona; more recently, when part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and as a town with a modest manufacturing industry centred chiefly on tobacco and cutlery, it was called Raab. It lies where the rivers Rába and Rábcza flow into the Little Danube. Here, by the Bishop's Palace, with its fifteenth-century Dóczi Chapel, stands the Cathedral, founded in the twelfth century and rebuilt between 1639 and 1645. Its Héderváry Chapel has stained-glass windows and contains a fifteenth-century silver bust of St Ladislaus. It was in Raab, on 4 April 1843, that Hans Richter was born. His family came from former Austria-Silesia, in the area of Freudenthal, the earliest recorded ancestors being Georg and Anna Richter, parents of Melzer (Melchior) Richter (1656–1720). Melzer's son Melchior (1692–1742) was, like his father, a farmer, but his grandson Josephus Richter (1726–1787) was first a labourer then a tailor in Breitenau and Markersdorf. Josephus’ son, Anton Franciscus Richter (1762–1819, grandfather of Hans) became a schoolmaster in Probstdorf, in the district of Vienna and from his first marriage with Theresia Knöbel he had a son Anton born in 1802.

Anton spent the last twenty-two years of his life in Raab but for ten years from 1822 he sang bass in the service of Count Nikolaus Esterházy, whose family in Eisenstadt was famous for its patronage of Haydn. Anton Richter was a gifted organist, singer, string player and composer and on 22 June 1832, from among eleven short-listed candidates, he was appointed Succentor or Subcantor (effectively the choirmaster) at Raab Cathedral but was soon elevated to the top musical post of Kapellmeister. He threw himself whole-heartedly into his duties, composing prolifically, and there are 118 extant compositions (64 sacred, 54 secular) in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of the Friends of Music) in Vienna and thirty in Györ Cathedral. He was also very conscientious in recording, over a twenty-year period from the start of his appointment in 1832, details of the musical life of the cathedral and its choir, all of which give an invaluable insight into the workings of such institutions.