Throughout his career, Wolf was obsessed with attaining success composing in large forms, and was continually dismayed by his label as a "songwriter"; he wrote that "...such recognition...disturbs me down to the very depths of my soul." (Wolf's obsession with success in the large-scale genre of opera would be the final expression of his madness.) Probably because of this urge to compose on a vast scale, Wolf compiled songs into volumes, each with enough variety to create a lengthy recital with contrasting sections. Also, Wolf linked songs within each book to produce a greater whole. The songbook became Wolf's large-scale form.

Hugo Wolf finished his three Michelangelo Lieder, for bass voice and piano, only six months before his mental breakdown and lengthy terminal illness—the result of syphilis. In December 1896, Paul Müller, the founder of the Berlin Hugo-Wolf Verein (Hugo Wolf Society), had given Wolf a gift of Michelangelo's sonnets in German translations by Walter Robert-Tornow. Wolf's three settings from the volume were published in Mannheim in 1898. A fourth song from the collection, entitled "Irdische und himmlische Liebe" and written at about the same time, was destroyed by the composer. Composition of the songs coincided with Wolf's perusal of Hermann Grimm's biography of Michelangelo. They would be the composer's last completed songs.

Wolf completed "Wohl denk' ich oft an mein vergang'nes Leben" (I often think on my past life), in G minor/major, on March 18, 1897. The composer described the song in a letter to a friend: "[It] begins with a melancholy introduction and holds fast to this tone until the line before the last, ...[then] takes on unexpectedly a vigorous character (developed from the previous motive) and closes festively with triumphal fanfares, like a flourish of trumpets sounded for [Michelangelo] by his contemporaries in homage." In the process, G minor changes to G major for a firm and triumphant close. The clarity of the melody is superb, as is its support by the harmonically captivating countermelody in the piano.

"Alles endet, was entstehet" (Everything ends that begins), in C sharp minor, is dated March 20, 1897. Wolf originally entitled the song, "Vanitas Vanitatum." Michelangelo's poem is a canzona in the style of Petrarch that speaks in no uncertain terms of death and the transitoriness of earthly things. Similarly, Wolf gives a stark, streamlined setting. He thought the song "truly enough to drive one crazy.... Such perilous things I am now producing to the public danger." In "Alles endet, was entstehet" we find Wolf using harmony to accentuate single words in the text. For example, at "Menschen waren wir ja auch / Froh und traurig, so wie ihr" (We, too, were once people / Happy and sad, like you), he switches between major and minor inflections to convey the difference between the "Froh und traurig" (happy and sad).

Melancholy marks "Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Lied von Gott" (My soul feels the yearning song of God), in E minor/major and composed in March 1897. Perhaps because the text is concerned with the present human condition, Wolf creates a more lush setting than for the first two songs. Opening slowly and reservedly, the vocal line becomes increasingly agitated and the harmony more colorful. At "ist es ein Klang, ein Traumgesicht," we hear a chromatically descending motive that recurs through the rest of the song, suggesting resignation. In this case, it is the submission of a man's heart to his mistress. The postlude of "Fühlt meine Seele" is similar to those of "Peregrina I" and "Peregrina II," both settings of poems by Eduard Mörike (1804-75) composed in 1888.

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1.Wohl denk'ich oft an mein vergangnes Leben

The last three songs Hugo Wolf ever composed were the three settings of poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti from the end of March 1897. The intent of the songs is revealed in their titles Wohl denk ich oft (Often I Think of My Past Life), Alles endet, was entstehet (All That Is Created Must Perish), and Fuhlt meine Seele (Does My Soul Feel the Longed for Life). Wolf wanted the songs to be the incarnation of the sculptor and one can hear in all of them Wolf's own voice crying out from the depths of his artistic greatness and his incipient madness. Wolf's own description of Wohl denk ich oft in a letter to a friend quoted in Hugo Wolf, A Biography by Frank Walker is still the best description of the song: it "begins with a melancholy introduction, and holds fast to this tone until the line before the last" then "takes on unexpectedly a vigorous character (developed from the previous motive) and closes festively with triumphal fanfares, like a flourish of trumpets sounded for him by his contemporaries." Indeed, Wohl denk ich oft is one of the grimmest and bleakest of all Wolf's songs, exceeded only by the last two Michelangelo songs in despair and nihilism. Within six months of completing Wohl denk ich oft, Wolf—embittered and insane—entered the asylum in which he died in February 1903.

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2.Alles endet, was entstehet

The three songs that constitute Hugo Wolf's Michelangelo Lieder were all completed in March 1897, just a half-year before the composer's descent into madness. Venereal disease, contracted during a visit to a brothel years before, brought about increasingly erratic behavior and following the writing of Fühlt meine Seele, no further works were issued from Wolf's pen. Throughout Wolf's fruitful years from 1877 onward, times of frenetic activity were followed by periods during which inspiration seemed to have abandoned him. Wolf knew frustration. Madness, however, was another thing. Although Michelangelo Buonarroti was best known to those of his own time and to those of succeeding generations as a great painter and sculptor, he was an estimable poet as well. "Alles endet, was entsehet" ("All things created have an ending") was the second of the three texts set by Wolf and, by far, the darkest in mood. Music writer Eric Sams has suggested that the music dwells beyond our grasp, "among the dead, speaking the language of the dead." Such oppressive dryness requires a special receptivity on the part of the listener. Nor is this a song for any but the deepest, gravest of voices. Bass Alexander Kipnis and bass baritone Hans Hotter made superlative recordings of it. Such magisterial artists take the listener into the frigid core of the music and manifests its greatness. Despite the vicissitudes Wolf had endured during the 1890s, he still experienced periods during which his genius shone undimmed. In Alles endet, was entsehet, an utmost economy of means is evident. As if to suggest the futility of struggle, the singing line moves upward and downward in small increments as if the exercise were too effortful. The discomfiting octaves that begin the song appear as if from a void. The singer sounds his first lines in hollow, uninflected tones, weary and matter of factly. If a measure of warmth can be detected, it arises from the gravity of what the narrator presents as thoughts are collected and related over a more regular pulse from the piano. The sun observes how all things perish: thoughts, words, sadness, and joy. Those who come after disappear as shadows in the daylight. When the singer arrives at "we, too, were once men, like you acquainted with happiness and sorrow," a sense of life creeps as the narrator grieves for that which is now nothingness. As the numbingly cold opening lines are sounded for a second time, however, lifelessness again overtakes the music and with a chilling, shuddering finality, the song dissipates, fading once more into the void. Those who look to song for simple pleasures will find no comfort in this disturbing work. Those who seek a deeper experience, however, may be provoked into a new regard for life as it is lived in the moment.

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3.Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht

Hugo Wolf's final songs, the three Michelangelo Lieder, are not for the faint of heart or for those with short attention spans. To the searching poem of Michelangelo Buonarroti, better known as master sculptor and painter, Fühlt meine Seele (Does my spirit...) seems in some degree an old song re-sung, but it soon establishes its own domain, foreshadowing little of the complete breakdown that would follow half a year later. Its subject is profound. Wolf matched feelingly, perceptively, and often beautifully that aching quest for answers sought by the singer. This was the final chapter in a life of blazing originality, Wolf's last published song. It emerges rather than beginning, the piano part circling about with open, spare harmonization before the singer enters and the texture somewhat softens. The first two lines reveal the uncertainty, the questioning that will direct the narrator through a series of images in search of an answer. "Does my spirit feel the soughtafter light of God, my creator?" poses the singer. Or does the light of some other loveliness from sorrow's realm glow within the heart, giving rise to remembrance? Is it a sound, a dream's imagining? The music rises through the exquisitely tangled harmonies of Wolf's fervid musical language, evocative and throat-catchingly lovely. The eyes and heart are filled with such strangely intense pain —- "die mich zu Tränen bringt"—that tears are brought forth. Upon the arrival of "bringt," a chord sounds in the piano recalling that ineffably beautiful transitional chord in Bedekt mich mit Blumen (vor Liebe) from the Spanisches Liederbuch. Repeated hearings bring no diminution of its spine-tingling effect. "Ich weiss nicht" comes the singer's own response, "I do not know." Where shall he find the light?, asks the singer as the understanding breaks over him that the light "ist nicht in mir." With utmost passion, the music crests and crests again as the singer considers that in his beloved's radiance, he may find the source. Caught between yes and no, sweetness and bitterness, he concludes that "your eyes, lady, are the cause." The song ends with the piano gently voicing a chromatically falling cadence repeated several times and rounding off the jagged trajectory traveled by singer and pianist. In performance, the song lasts about four and a half minutes, but the musical materials within it might sustain a full symphonic movement. The tension between minor (at the beginning) and major (as understanding begins to break over the singer) is surely handled, persuasively explicating, and underlining both innermost feelings and the singer's sometimes convoluted movement toward comprehending them. This song, like its two companions in Wolf's Michelangelo Lieder, was clearly intended for male voice—and a deep one at that. For the Hugo Wolf Society, bass Alexander Kipnis recorded all three songs in 1933—incomparably—with both gravitas and searing emotional freedom.

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