Editing Hugo Wolf (section)

== Life ==
=== Early life (1860–1887) ===
Hugo Wolf was born in [[Windischgraz|Windischgrätz]] in the [[Duchy of Styria]]<ref>{{cite book |title=Geburts- und Tauf-Buch |date=1857–1879 |page=15 |url=https://data.matricula-online.eu/sl/slovenia/maribor/slovenj-gradec/02547/?pg=15 |access-date=April 20, 2024}}</ref> (now [[Slovenj Gradec]], [[Slovenia]]), then a part of the [[Austrian Empire]]. [[Herbert von Karajan]] was related to him on his maternal side.<ref name="KarajanFamily">{{cite web
   |url        = http://www.karajan.co.uk/family.html
   |title        = Herbert Von Karajan-Karajan Family
   |publisher        = Karajan Family
   |access-date        = 14 March 2012
   |archive-date        = 26 February 2012
   |archive-url        = https://web.archive.org/web/20120226030037/http://www.karajan.co.uk/family.html
   |url-status        = dead
   }}</ref><ref name="Lapajne2008">{{cite web |url=http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2500 |title=The Shared Slovenian Ancestors of Herbert von Karajan and Hugo Wolf |date=4 April 2008 |access-date=5 May 2008 |author=Branka Lapajne}}</ref> He spent most of his life in [[Vienna]], becoming a representative of a "New German" trend in [[Lieder]], a trend which followed from the expressive, [[chromatic scale|chromatic]] and dramatic musical innovations of [[Richard Wagner]].

A [[child prodigy]], Wolf 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. Subjects other than music failed to hold his interest; he was dismissed from the first secondary school he attended as being "wholly inadequate", left another over his difficulties in the compulsory Latin studies, and after a falling-out with a professor who commented on his "damned music", quit the last. From there, he went to the [[University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna|Vienna Conservatory]], much to the disappointment of his father, who had hoped his son would not try to make his living from music. Once again, however, he was dismissed after two years<ref>{{Cite book |last=Illing |first=Robert |title=Pergamon Dictionary of Musicians and Music |publisher=Pergamon Press |year=1963 |volume=1: Musicians |location=Oxford |pages=130}}</ref> for "breach of discipline", although the oft-rebellious 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. Though his fiery temperament was not ideally suited to teaching, Wolf's musical gifts, as well as his personal charm, earned him attention and patronage. Support of benefactors allowed him to make a living as a composer, and 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. During their relationship, hints of his mature style would become evident in his Lieder. Wolf was prone to depression and wide mood swings, which would affect him all through his life. When Franck left him just before his 21st birthday, he was despondent. He returned home, although his family relationships were also strained; his father was still convinced his son was a ne'er-do-well. His brief and undistinguished tenure as second [[Kapellmeister]] at [[Salzburg]] only reinforced this opinion: Wolf had neither the temperament, the conducting technique nor the affinity for the decidedly non-Wagnerian repertoire to be successful, and within a year had again returned to Vienna to teach in much the same circumstances as before.

[[File:Postcard-1910 Hugo Wolf.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Hugo Wolf (1885)]]

Wagner's death in February 1883 was another deeply moving event in the life of the young composer. The song "Zur Ruh, zur Ruh" was composed shortly afterward and is considered to be the best of his early works; it is speculated that it was intended as an elegy for Wagner. Wolf often despaired of his own future in the ensuing years, in a world from which his idol had departed, leaving tremendous footsteps to follow and no guidance on how to do so. This left him often extremely temperamental, alienating friends and patrons, although his charm helped him retain them more than his actions merited. His songs had meanwhile caught the attention of [[Franz Liszt]], whom he respected greatly, and who like Wolf's previous mentors advised him to pursue larger forms; advice he this time followed with the symphonic tone poem ''Penthesilea''. His activities as a critic began to pick up. He was merciless in his criticism of the inferior works he saw taking over the musical atmosphere of the time;<ref>Andreas Dorschel, 'Arbeit am Kanon. Zu Hugo Wolfs Musikkritiken', in ''Musicologica Austriaca'' XXVI (2007), pp. 43-52.</ref> those of [[Anton Rubinstein]] he considered particularly odious. But he was as fervent in his support of Liszt, [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]] and [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]], whose genius he recognized. Known as "Wild Wolf" for the intensity and expressive strength of his convictions, his vitriol made him some enemies. He composed little during this time, and what he did write he couldn't get performed; the [[Rosé Quartet]] (led by Vienna Philharmonic concertmaster Arnold Rosé) would not even look at his D minor Quartet after it was picked apart in a column, and the premiere of ''Penthesilea'' was met by the Vienna Philharmonic, when they tried it out under their celebrated conservative conductor Hans Richter, with nothing but derision for 'the man who had dared to criticize "Meister Brahms"', as Richter himself caustically put it.

He abandoned his activities as a critic in 1887 and began composing once more; perhaps not unexpectedly, the first songs he wrote after his compositional hiatus (to poems by [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], [[Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff|Joseph von Eichendorff]] and [[Joseph Viktor von Scheffel]]) emphasized themes of strength and resolution under adversity. Shortly thereafter, he completed the terse, witty one-movement ''[[Italian Serenade (Wolf)|Italian Serenade]]'' for string quartet which is regarded as one of the finest examples of his mature instrumental compositional style. Only a week later his father died, leaving him devastated, and he did not compose for the remainder of the year.

=== Maturity (1888–1896) ===
1888 and 1889 proved to be amazingly productive years for Wolf, and a turning point in his career. After the publication of a dozen of his songs late the preceding year, Wolf once again desired to return to composing; he travelled to the vacation home of the Werners, family friends whom Wolf had known since childhood, in [[Perchtoldsdorf]] (a short train ride from Vienna), to escape and compose in solitude. Here he composed the ''[[Eduard Mörike|Mörike]]-Lieder'' at a frenzied pace. A short break, and a change of house, this time to the vacation home of more longtime friends, the Ecksteins, and the ''[[Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff|Eichendorff]]-Lieder'' followed, then the 51 ''[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]-Lieder'', spilling into 1889. After a summer holiday, the ''[[Spanisches Liederbuch (Wolf)|Spanisches Liederbuch]]'' was begun in October 1889;<ref>{{Britannica|1940977|Spanisches-Liederbuch}}</ref> though Spanish-flavoured compositions were in fashion in the day, Wolf sought out poems that had been neglected by other composers.

Wolf himself saw the merit of these compositions immediately, raving to friends that they were the best things he had yet composed (it was with the aid and urging of several of the more influential of them that the works were initially published). It was now that the world outside Vienna would recognize Wolf as well. Tenor [[Ferdinand Jäger]], whom Wolf had heard in ''[[Parsifal]]'' during his brief summer break from composing, was present at one of the first concerts of the Mörike works and quickly became a champion of his music, performing a recital of only Wolf and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] in December 1888. His works were praised in reviews, including one in the ''[[Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung]]'', a widely read German newspaper. (The recognition was not always positive; [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]]'s adherents, still smarting from Wolf's merciless reviews, returned the favor—when they would have anything to do with him at all. Brahms's biographer [[Max Kalbeck]] ridiculed Wolf for his immature writing and odd tonalities; another composer refused to share a program with him, while [[Amalie Materna]], a [[Richard Wagner|Wagnerian]] singer, had to cancel her Wolf recital when allegedly faced with the threat of being on the critics' blacklist if she went on.)

Only a few more settings, completing the first half of the ''[[Italienisches Liederbuch (Wolf)|Italienisches Liederbuch]]'', were composed in 1891 before Wolf's mental and physical health once again took a downturn at the end of the year; exhaustion from his prolific past few years combined with the effects of syphilis and his depressive temperament caused him to stop composing for the next several years. Continuing concerts of his works in Austria and Germany spread his growing fame; even Brahms and the critics who had previously reviled Wolf gave favorable reviews. However, Wolf was consumed with depression, which stopped him from writing—which only left him more depressed. He completed orchestrations of previous works, but new compositions were not forthcoming, and certainly not the opera which he was now fixated on composing, still convinced that success in the larger forms was the mark of compositional greatness.

Wolf had scornfully rejected the libretto to ''[[Der Corregidor]]'' when it was first presented to him in 1890, but his determination to compose an opera blinded him to its faults upon second glance. Based on ''[[The Three-Cornered Hat]]'', by [[Pedro Antonio de Alarcón]], the darkly humorous story about an adulterous love triangle is one that Wolf could identify with: he had been in love with Melanie Köchert, married to his friend Heinrich Köchert, for several years. (It is speculated that their romance began in earnest in 1884, when Wolf accompanied the Köcherts on holiday; though Heinrich discovered the affair in 1893 he remained Wolf's patron and Melanie's husband.) The opera was completed in nine months and was initially met with success, but Wolf's musical setting could not compensate for the weakness of the text, and it was doomed to failure; it has not yet been successfully revived.

A renewal of creative activity resulted in Wolf's completion of the ''Italienisches Liederbuch'' with two dozen songs written in March and April 1896, the composition of three ''Michelangelo Lieder'' in March, 1897 (a group of six had been projected) and preliminary work during that year on an opera, ''Manuel Venegas''.<ref>Erik Sams, ''The Songs of Hugo Wolf'', Oxford University Press, 1961.</ref>

=== Final years (1897–1903) ===
[[File:Hugo Wolf 1902.jpg|thumb|Wolf in 1902]]
Wolf's last concert appearance, which included his early champion Jäger, was in February 1897. Shortly thereafter Wolf slipped into syphilitic insanity, with only occasional spells of wellbeing. He left sixty pages of an unfinished opera, ''Manuel Venegas'', in 1897, in a desperate attempt to finish before he lost his mind completely; after mid-1899 he could make no music at all and once even tried to drown himself, after which he was placed in a Vienna asylum at his own insistence. Melanie visited him faithfully during his decline until his death on 22 February 1903, and Melanie died by suicide in 1906.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sams|first=Eric|editor-first1=Susan |editor-last1=Youens |date=2001|title=Wolf, Hugo|url=https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.52073|access-date=February 26, 2021|website=Grove Music Online|doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.52073|isbn=9781561592630 }}</ref>

Wolf is buried in the [[Zentralfriedhof]] (Central Cemetery) in Vienna, along with many other notable composers.