Hugo Filipp Iakob Wolf Austrian composer whose works marked the highest phase in the development of German romantic song Date of Birth: 13.03.1860 Country: Austria

1. Biography of Hugo Philipp Jakob Wolf
2. Music Career
3. Symphonic Poem and Chamber Works
4. Later Years and Death

Biography of Hugo Philipp Jakob Wolf

Hugo Philipp Jakob Wolf, an Austrian composer whose works marked the highest phase of development in German romantic song, was born on March 13, 1860, in Windischgraz, in southern Styria (now Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia). He showed musical abilities at an early age and received his first lessons from his father, who was the owner of a tannery factory and a gifted amateur musician. Wolf studied at the Vienna Conservatory from 1875 to 1877. To earn a living, he gave piano lessons and from 1884 to 1887, he worked as a music critic for the newspaper 'Wiener Salonblatt'.

Music Career

Aside from his opera 'Der Corregidor' (1895, premiered in Mannheim in 1896), Wolf composed almost exclusively songs starting from 1888, with a collection of about 250 songs in his legacy. In the tradition of Schubert and Schumann, Wolf combined his songs into cycles. Among the most significant cycles are 'Gedichte von Eichendorff' (20 songs, 1880-1888), 'Gedichte von Eduard Mörike' (53 songs, 1888), 'Gedichte von Goethe' (51 songs, 1888-1890), 'Spanisches Liederbuch' (44 songs, 1889-1890), and 'Italienisches Liederbuch' (first part: 22 songs, 1890-1891; second part: 24 songs, 1896). Wolf carefully chose the texts for his songs and choral works, and his songs are characterized by their delicate reproduction of the atmosphere of the selected poems - tender love lyrics, humor, satire, grotesque, and dramatic realism. The melodic line of the vocal part precisely follows the meter of the poem and harmoniously interacts with the developed and harmonically rich piano part.

Symphonic Poem and Chamber Works

Wolf's symphonic poem 'Penthesilea' (1883-1885), based on H. von Kleist's drama, was constructed following the model of Liszt's programmatic poems. In chamber genres, Wolf composed a string quartet in D minor (1878-1884, with an epigraph from Goethe's 'Faust': 'Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren' - 'You shall be without, shall suffer'), an intermezzo in E-flat major (1886), and a serenade in G major (1887), which he later arranged for a small orchestra in 1892. Among Wolf's choral compositions are 'Christnacht' (1886-1889), 'Elfenlied' (1889-1891), 'Der Feuerreiter' (1892), and 'Sechs geistliche Lieder' (1881).

Later Years and Death

In 1897, Wolf composed the cycle 'Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo' (Three Poems by Michelangelo) and began working on the opera 'Manuel Venegas'. However, the opera remained unfinished as the composer began to show symptoms of mental illness, leading to his confinement in a mental institution in September 1897. In February 1898, there was temporary relief, and Wolf traveled to Italy. However, after an attempted suicide in October, he, at his own request, was placed in a mental institution in Vienna, where he eventually died from progressive paralysis on February 22, 1903.