Hugo Wolf

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Lore & Background

Hugo Wolf was born in Windischgrätz in the Duchy of Styria (now Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia), then a part of the Austrian Empire. A child prodigy, he was taught piano and violin by his father beginning at the age of four, and once in primary school studied piano and music theory with Sebastian Weixler. He was dismissed from the first secondary school he attended as being 'wholly inadequate', left another over difficulties in compulsory Latin studies, and after a falling-out with a professor who commented on his 'damned music', quit the last. He went to the Vienna Conservatory but was dismissed after two years for 'breach of discipline', though Wolf would claim he quit in frustration over the school's conservatism. After eight months with his family, he returned to Vienna to teach music. His fiery temperament was not ideally suited to teaching, but his musical gifts and personal charm earned him attention and patronage. A daughter of one of his greatest benefactors inspired him to write to Vally ('Valentine') Franck, his first love, with whom he was involved for three years. When Franck left him just before his 21st birthday, he was despondent. Wagner's death in February 1883 was another deeply moving event; the song 'Zur Ruh, zur Ruh' was composed shortly afterward and is considered the best of his early works, speculated to be an elegy for Wagner. Wolf's activities as a critic began to pick up; known as 'Wild Wolf' for the intensity of his convictions, he was merciless in criticism of inferior works, particularly those of Anton Rubinstein, but fervent in support of Liszt, Schubert and Chopin. He abandoned his activities as a critic in 1887 and began composing once more, completing the terse, witty one-movement Italian Serenade for string quartet shortly before his father died, leaving him devastated.

Reader's Guide

Hugo Wolf's significance lies in his concentrated expressive intensity within the Lied form, a unique contribution to late Romantic music. His most productive periods were 1888 and 1889, during which he composed the Mörike-Lieder at a frenzied pace in Perchtoldsdorf, then the Eichendorff-Lieder, the 51 Goethe-Lieder spilling into 1889, and the Spanisches Liederbuch begun in October 1889. Wolf himself saw the merit of these compositions immediately, noting to friends they were the best things he had yet composed. Tenor Ferdinand Jäger, whom Wolf had heard in Parsifal, became a champion of his music, performing a recital of only Wolf and Beethoven in December 1888. His works were praised in reviews, including one in the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung. However, Brahms's adherents, still smarting from Wolf's merciless reviews, returned the favor; Brahms's biographer Max Kalbeck ridiculed Wolf for his immature writing and odd tonalities, and another composer refused to share a program with him. Only a few more settings, completing the first half of the Italienisches Liederbuch, were composed in 1891 before Wolf's mental and physical health took a downturn from exhaustion, syphilis, and his depressive temperament, stopping composition for several years. Continuing concerts of his works in Austria and Germany spread his growing fame; even Brahmsian critics who had previously reviled Wolf gave favorable reviews. His opera Der Corregidor, based on The Three-Cornered Hat by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, was completed in nine months and initially met with success, but the weakness of the text doomed it to failure. A renewal of creative activity resulted in completion of the Italienisches Liederbuch with two dozen songs written in March and April 1896, and three Michelangelo Lieder in March 1897.

Did You Know?

• Wolf was baptized as Hugo Philip. Jacob. Wolf, son of Filip Wolf and Katharina (née Nußbaumer) Wolf.
• Herbert von Karajan was related to Wolf on his maternal side.
• Wolf's song 'Zur Ruh, zur Ruh' was composed shortly after Wagner's death in February 1883 and is considered the best of his early works, speculated to be an elegy for Wagner.
• Wolf completed the one-movement Italian Serenade for string quartet shortly before his father's death in 1887.
• Wolf's last composition was written in 1898 before he suffered a mental collapse caused by syphilis.