Wolf composed the 53 Mörike Lieder between February 16 and November 26, 1888. The Mörike Lieder were strikingly original, as contemporary critics noted, despite Wolf's contention that he was continuing the tradition of Schubert and Schumann.

Eduard Mörike (1804-75), a Swabian poet, was a favorite among late nineteenth century German composers. A Protestant pastor with leaning toward Catholicism, Mörike had, while young, encountered a woman he called, "Peregrina" (wanderer), who was apparently unstable and had wandered into his town. The exact nature of their relationship is uncertain, but he wrote numerous poems about her that are filled with emotional and erotic tension.

Several aspects of Wolf's songs are traditional, such as the repeated phrases in "Er ist's," or the occasional selection of texts for their musical potential as opposed to their poetic greatness. Most of the songs, however, are original in conception, featuring Wolf's unfailing instincts for text setting and his ability to portray the meaning of both single words and an entire poem through rhythm and harmony. Also, Wolf's predilection for reading through piano reductions of Wagner's operas comes through in many of his piano parts.

"Das verlassene Mägdlein" (The forsaken girl) had been set over fifty times when Wolf completed his on March 24. Every morning, a young woman rises very early to light the fire in her home. As she watches the flames, she remembers dreaming of her former, unfaithful lover, and hopes daybreak will banish her dreams of him. In A minor, the simple, transparent piano part portrays the stillness of early morning, while a shift to A major conveys the brightness of the flames. Also, unsettling augmented chords support her mention of the unfaithful lover. The lively triplet accompaniment of "Er ist's" (It's spring), of May 5, is sometimes juxtaposed with duplets in the voice. An extended, energetic piano conclusion makes the work a great concert piece that is very unlike Schumann's introspective setting of the same poem.

Variation technique appears in "Storchenbotschaft" (The storks' message) (March 27), in which two storks try to tell a man he has twins. Unable to speak, the birds must gesture while the man tries to guess what they mean. The music becomes increasingly animated until the final outburst when the man realizes the truth. Wolf alters the melody of his strophic "Um Mitternacht" (At midnight) (April 20) in order to emphasize certain words, particularly "süsser" (sweet). Rhythm is often the unifying factor of a song, such as the 5/4 meter of "Jägerlied" (Hunter's song) (February 22), which reflects the trochaic pentameter of the poem, while the pace and rhythm of "Fussreise" (Walking-tour) (March 21) evokes walking.

Wolf set two of Mörike's poems concerning the mysterious "Peregrina." The poem of "Peregrina I" (April 28) concerns Mörike's earliest feelings of physical desire for the woman, while Wolf's "Peregrina II" (April 30) sets the fourth of Mörike's five poems on the subject, in which the image of the woman haunts the poet after he has rejected her. Both of Wolf's songs build erotic tension through the same descending chromatic motive.

Homesick wanderers appear frequently in German lieder, and Wolf's idyllic "Heimweh" (homesickness) (April 1) is a perfect example, in which the lethargic accompaniment matches the unenthusiastic gait of the traveler.

The profound "Der Genesene an die Hoffnung," which Wolf placed at the head of the Mörike Lieder, was completed on March 6. As the subject of the poem gradually overcomes his illness, the music becomes more triumphant, climaxing with fanfare-like passages.

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7.Das verlassene Mägdlein

Three days after setting Eduard Mörike's Das verlassene Mägdlein (The Abandoned Maiden) on March 24, 1888, Hugo Wolf wrote to a friend in Vienna, "On Saturday I composed, without intending to do so, Das verlassene Mägdlein, already set to music by Schumann in a heavenly way. If in spire of that I set to music the same poem, it happened almost against my will; but perhaps just because I allowed myself to be captured suddenly by the magic of this poem, something outstanding arose, and I believe that my composition may show itself beside Schumann's." It may indeed. The 26th setting of Mörike in five weeks, Das verlassene Mägdlein captures every nuance of the poem from the pre-dawn quiet and palpable sense of melancholy in the piano accompaniment to the aching grief of the soprano's melody that expresses all the sorrow of a woman foresaken by a faithless lover. With its throbbing rhythms, chromatic harmonies, and endlessly mournful tone, Das verlassene Mägdlein is another miracle by Wolf.

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9.Nimmersatte Liebe

The works of Swabian poet Eduard Mörike were all but devoured by Hugo Wolf as the composer set them to music during two paroxysms of creativity in late winter/early spring 1888. In the case of Nimmersatte Liebe (literally, Insatiable Love), Wolf wrote to his friend Edmund Lang immediately upon the completion of the song on February 24. Reporting himself "happy as a king," he informed Lang that when he heard it, the Devil would seize him with pleasure. Noting that the conclusion "breaks into a regular student's song," he proclaimed its dizzyingly merry aura a great success. After quoting the text, Wolf suggested to Lang that he (Lang) might save himself the expense of purchasing Mörike's poems as the composer would acquaint him at length with "the complete poetical works of my favorite." That Wolf was smitten with Mörike's poetry is no cause for wonder. Just as the composer ranged widely, having enormous style without exhibiting a style, so did Mörike stretch from the fantastic and horrifying "Feuerrreiter" ("Firerider") to the teasing, hyperbolic, artfully exaggerated treatise on love found in "Nimmersatte Liebe." One wonders anew at the observational acuity of this man of the cloth, a Protestant minister whose intimacy with love's vagaries might raise an eyebrow. Wolf followed the text with keenest pleasure, conceiving a piano partnership with the voice (not mere accompaniment) that prods and comments, highlights and parodies in quick succession. The song opens with a brief three-note cadence for the piano, repeated as though an entreaty to listen. The singer enters with a phrase that begins, descends a tone, then falls through a wider interval, conversational, yet imploring as the singer explains that one cannot satisfy love with kisses alone. Comparing it to the flow of water through a sieve, the singer comments that one could kiss forever and still not slake the demands of love. The second verse agitatedly tells of kissing "until our lips were bitten sore." The girl, however, like a lamb facing the knife, pleaded with her eyes to keep going, "the more it hurts, the better!" The final verse opens with a revisitation of the opening cadence, this time noting that love is that way and has always been thus. Then comes the "student song" Wolf described, one of his own conjuring and not entirely indiscreet. Informing the listener that it was so, "even for the great Solomon in all his wisdom," it implies that experience, no more than intelligence, is not a defense against the unquenchable demands of love. Following the grandiose arch of sound produced by the singer and pianist here, the vocal line drops in altitude and volume to an amused, confiding conclusion. The opening piano cadences are repeated, this time conclusively resolving.

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10.Fussreise

Fussreise (A Morning Walk) drew from its composer the most amazed and delighted reaction. Finished on March 21, 1888, the song prompted Wolf to inform his friend Edmund Lang, "When you have heard this song you can have but one wish—to die." The creative flow that poured from Wolf in his borrowed country retreat was addressed by Wolf in a March 23 comment to Josef Strasser: "I am working unceasingly with a thousand horse-power" on songs that "are masterpieces." Fired by the range, exquisite imagery, and passion of Eduard Mörike's poetry, Wolf found himself in a frenzy of creativity. Fussreise was fully worthy of its composer's high opinion. Even the capricious Viennese public responded with enthusiasm to this and three other songs sung by Wagnerian tenor Ferdinand Jäger at the Bösendorfersaal on December 15, 1888. Fussreise is not merely a description of what the singer observes on a brisk morning walk, but a rumination on nature, man's relationship to her, and, by implication, man's relationship to others of his own species. Mörike was a Protestant minister, albeit one with humanistic leanings. Wolf, therefore, seems to have gotten the right flavor in setting this poem. Its seeming religiosity is already tempered with secular elements. Establishing the proper tempo is the responsibility of the pianist; the theme is brisk and jaunty, but not overly fast. This is, after all, a morning walk. The singer breaks in, describing the woods, the morning air, the sunlight, and bird song, wondering if Adam didn't feel the same thing, the same bliss in the Garden of Eden. The singer philosophizes: Adam couldn't have been so bad, singing and praising his Creator and Preserver. Were that it might be so, voices the singer, that his entire life might be spent in the gentle perspiration of such a morning walk. With the utmost naturalness, Wolf found the rhythmic swing for singer and pianist alike. More evidence can be found here of the increasing independence between Wolf's vocal line and accompaniment. They entwine beautifully, but each is set free to complement and contrast. The effect is utmost simplicity, though the means are subtle. Although Wolf specifies ziemlich bewegt (fairly quick) for the tempo, the pace is kept buoyant by the singer, who (ideally) sings heartily but without overemphasis. The pianist avoids clomping through the rhythmic figures Wolf conceived as lilting. The middle section finds the voice settling to a lower pitch, thoughtful in considering that Adam was not so bad. After disposing of the stern instructors and preachers, the song lifts once more in pitch and temperament to brightly carry on through Adam's love and praise for the Creator. Returning to their home key of D major, singer and accompanist take up the beginning phrases, transmuted this time from observation to a heartfelt celebration of life.

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12.Verborgenheit

One of Hugo Wolf's most popular songs, Verborgenheit—which might be translated as either seclusion or withdrawal—is atypical of the composer's style. Constructed on an ABCA progression, its first and final sections are essentially the same. The second section moves from the sense of withdrawal from the world voiced in the first portion to a more agitated, questioning mode before a key shift into the third section, which rises from a deeply inward feeling to a radiant, yet controlled climax on the word "wonniglich" ("joyous brightening") before receding into "in meiner brust" ("within my breast"). In that portion of the song, Wolf takes the voice from the lower middle register to a crest of sound and emotion that lifts the singer, accompanist, and mood into a major key. Although effective and affecting when sung by an artist attuned to its subtle probing of the soul's innermost feelings, it is often regarded as inferior to Wolf's finest work. The composer himself came to regard it later as one of his lesser achievements, exclaiming at one point that he outright disowned it. Perhaps, its Brahmsian flavor (Wolf despised Brahms) proved off-putting to both Wolf and his most passionate disciples, for without utmost restraint on the part of both singer and pianist, the song can take on an aura of cheap sentimentality. Yet, in the hands of a Kathleen Ferrier or Herbert Janssen, Verborgenheit can provide a moment of revelatory introspection, a drawing to the surface of feelings usually too far within to be articulated. Nonetheless, short of such a carefully shaded, dynamically sensitive reading, it can seem out of context with Wolf's better, text-amplifying Lieder. Verborgenheit is dated March 13, 1888, one of a floodtide of songs set to texts by Eduard Mörike (1804 - 1875). Undeniably magnificent on their own, Mörike's lyric poems were given wider currency through the settings conceived by Wolf. Before Wolf set "Verborgenheit," some 13 settings had already been attempted by other composers—none so perceptively, however. Schumann had utilized nine of the poet's texts and Robert Franz and Brahms had also turned to the Swabian poet for various samplings of his verse. Still, he had remained a largely regional favorite, his four published editions totaling only 4,000 copies at the time of his death. Though a Protestant minister, Mörike wrote openly and tellingly of love, both fulfilled and thwarted, the subject and the poet's knowing treatment of it proving immensely attractive to Wolf.

Verborgenheit deserves its place as a favorite of singers and audiences alike, though its success should not obscure the fact that other, more exquisitely conceived songs by Wolf deserve greater admiration.

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13.Im Frühling ('Hier lieg ich')

A song of great longing, Im Frühling (In Spring) is yet another of the perceptive combinings of poetic expression and superb music that marked Hugo Wolf's best work. At a duration of approximately four and a half minutes, it is longer than many of Wolf's keenly observed vignettes; its length is dictated by the detail of Eduard Mörike's poem and by the lingering scale of its utterance. It is, in the words of Wolf annotator Eric Sams, "a masterpiece." Mörike's reputation as one of Germany's greatest lyric poets is corroborated by the text. The speaker lies on a hill in the springtime; observing nature around him, he asks his imagined love where she lives, that he might live with her. Yet, his heart understands that she, like the zephyr, has no home. When will his heart, open in longing and hope, be stilled? The poet's vision invokes the cloud, the river, the sun's golden kiss. His dazzled eyes close as if in sleep, while his ears hear only the buzz of a bee. His thoughts wander, flitting from happiness to lament. What memories are being formed in this reverie? Memories of days now past, memories too interior for words. Although Frank Walker placed this song among those of Wolf beholden to folk music, is seems too finely wrought for such categorization. The accompaniment begins its constant modulation in the very first measures. The sinuous melody and the equally flowing accompaniment often seem to be pursing their own individual course, but this merely reinforces the deep, yet dreamy ruminations of the text. Little rapturous gestures cause the music to rise hopefully, while others, 'ihr habt kein Haus' (but, you have no home) fall away, returning the listener to the wondering of the opening phrases. When the singer tells of his eyes closing, a brief interlude for accompaniment only gently affirms the effect of peaceful thoughts roaming as if of their own volition. Before it ends, the interlude gathers itself together and moves back to conscious thought. The singer enters, once more focused on his yet unfulfilled yearning. What memories? Thoughts of the "Alte unnennbare Tage!"—old unnameable days. The gravity underlying this final phrase has lingered barely beneath the surface all along, unstated but keenly felt.

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15.Auf einer Wanderung

One of Hugo Wolf's remarkable Mörike songs, Auf einer Wanderung (On a Journey) is impervious to the threat of over praise. A scenario of uncompromised perfection, it ranks among Wolf's finest songs, and hence, is among the best of the best. Its gestation was a little more protracted than those of other songs composed during the same period. After completing the first part, Wolf took two weeks to arrive at a solution to the second, visionary section. The time was well spent, for the song holds together with convincing facility. More than that, however, it is wrapped in an aura of inevitability that all great works must possess. There are no seams showing. The singer describes his arrival in a charming little town as the glow of sunset settles over its streets. He recalls hearing a voice that reminded him of golden bells or a chorus of nightingales stirring the air and bringing refreshment to the roses. He lingered, overtaken by the joy he felt. He remembered nothing further until he found himself outside the town, the skies glowing with a rush of crimson and the town lying behind in a golden haze. The stream flowed through the alders to the mill, the mill murmuring in turn. It was as though he were intoxicated, as though he were in a dream. He cries to his muse, "You have quickened my heart with love's joy!" Perhaps the composer's own experiences of heart-filling pleasure in the Austrian mountains lent a heightened empathy to this setting. In any event, Wolf found precisely the musical means, carefully detailed, to serve Mörike's lovely verse in its every aspect. A direction of "Leicht bewegt" (Quickly and lightly) marks the four measures (plus pick-up) of the piano introduction. A brightly bounding theme in 6/8 time establishes the importance of the accompaniment. Indeed, here and in certain other more extended songs of this period, Wolf employs the piano in more independent fashion than had been the custom before. The singer skips in zestfully, but lightly (no louder than "piano") as the recollection of the friendly town begins. Keeping words crisp and forward, the singer excitedly, sometimes ecstatically, recounts the beauty of the evening. As the singer recalls how he lingered in enchantment, the pianist slips into a transition, slowing the tempo as the rambling theme from the beginning returns. This time, however, it evokes a trance-like state. The singer wonders how he has arrived at the town's perimeter. In visionary transport, the singer recalls the town shining in a golden haze before invoking his muse. The voice soars and dips as the piano works its way through several modulations to E flat major, two grand rolled chords (marked "broadly") establishing the way for the singer to rapturously cry "O Muse, you have touched my heart with love's joy."

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17.Der Gärtner ('Auf ihrem Leibrösslein')

A fanciful miniature, this song gives evidence of both the limitless mind of poet Eduard Mörike and Wolf's sensitivity to those word paintings that lie halfway between describing and imagining. Mörike, the Swabian wordsmith who was both a Protestant minister and humanist, here gives the listener the briefest of vignettes that flits into view, makes a vivid impression, and then moves just as quickly beyond one's perception. The scenario is simple. On a summer's day, a youthful gardener momentarily rests from his work in the palace garden to observe the princess ride by on a white horse. The scarlet plumes in her hat nod as the garden's paths shine as if gold in the sunlight. The gardener thinks to himself, "For a single plume, I'd give up all my flowers." And the princess rides on. The accompaniment begins applying brush to canvass with springing figures, notes short in value to represent the light step of the horse. A princess such as this would not have a clomping, heavy-footed beast; no, this animal is both a splendid white and light-gaited. The bright, sun-filled figures in the piano are almost Schubertian in their insistence. The scene is captured by Wolf's music with almost Technicolor perfection. Wolf leaves it to his singer to make the listener feel the gardener's dazzled response to the brief spectacle he beholds. The poem is subtle: the young man's comprehension is likewise understated. Implied is the uncrossable gulf that exists between their respective worlds. That of the princess is one of splendor, whereas the gardener's is of common tasks and little aspiration. The young man is so taken by the radiance of what transpires that he has to pause in his work. As soon as the princess passes, however, it is back to reality as the steed trots onward in a bright, stately fashion (the piano continues on to portray them receding from view). All this in a song lasting less than a minute-and-a-half. The task of the interpreters is to maintain the buoyancy of the mood, resisting heavy-handed underlining. The pianist conveys the real essence as the singer describes the event somewhat matter-of-factly, albeit tinged with a perceptible measure of awe.

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20.Auf eine Christblume 1

Morike's poem to a Christmas rose combines mysticism, images of folklore, and Christianity in a meditative poem, one which inspired Wolf to write a setting which he later revisited to orchestrate, though he abandoned the task just before its completion. The tranquil vocal lines float over a largely chordal accompaniment, simpler than most that Wolf wrote, further enhancing the contemplative mood. There is no sustained melody in either part, and Wolf himself breaks the almost mystical mood of the earlier verses by concluding with the delicate quavers and semi-quavers that depict the elf gazing and then slipping away. This unexpected change of focus is a fascinating touch.

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24.In der Frühe ('Kein Schlaf noch kühlt das Auge')

Wolf composed In der Frühe (At Dawn) on May 5, 1888. It was the 40th setting of Eduard Mörike's poetry he had completed since February 16 of that year and the second Mörike song of the day. After three years of indecision and vacillation, Wolf had found himself as a composer; or, to put it another way, he had found himself to be a song composer. Not since Schubert in 1814-1815 or Schumann in 1840-1841 had another composer so completely and joyfully found fulfillment in setting poetry as songs. And not just songs, but art songs of the highest order, art songs that combined faithfulness to the text, emotional expressivity, dramatic intensity, and musical profundity. In In der Frühe, Wolf through Mörike's poem creates an entire dramatic scene moving from a sleepless night full of existential dread to a solemn joy in the coming of dawn in a slow, chromatic melody sensitive to every word of the text above a piano accompaniment that embodies the whole world of nocturnal terrors and daylight serenity.

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25.Schlafendes Jesuskind ('Sohn der Jungfrau')

A meditation on a painting of the Christ child by Francesco Albani (1578-1660), Schlafendes Jesuskind (The Sleeping Christ-child) is a song of such intimacy that it resists performance in a venue too large for notes and words voiced with exceeding softness. Still, the song has taken its place among Wolf's masterpieces, a work of such piercing beauty and hushed radiance that discerning audiences are willing to brave the difficulties in presentation in exchange for the possibility of something incomparable. Schlafendes Jesuskind emerged on October 6, 1888, as part of a second set of songs set to Eduard Mörike's poetry. The writer had been inspired by Albani's painting, which gripped him with its dark beauty and the placing of the infant Jesus on "the wood of sorrows," an allusion to the cross yet to come. Capturing Mörike's fervid religiosity tinged with humanistic impulses, the painting drew from him an expression of inward, yet cosmic wonderment. The Son of the Virgin, the poet observes, is seen asleep on the ground, cradled on the wood of sorrows by the pious artist, laid beneath His quiet dreams. He is a bud in which is concealed the majesty of the Father. If only, the poet wonders, one could see those images that pass behind that brow and dark eyelashes. The pianist begins in great solemnity, sounding simple hymn-like chords that quietly rise, then fall in a gentle chromatic scale, as though in an opening prayer. The singer enters with a seven-note phrase that descends in two whole steps before rising a fifth and obliquely lifting on "Heaven's child." The effect is of an awed contemplation that can scarcely be put into words. The beholder notes the import of the artist's decision to place the Christ child on the wood of sorrows to cradle His quiet dreams. "Blume du" (You blossom) remains in an intimate framework, but resolutely shines in voice and piano. Finding a musical expression for contemplation of the Child's dreams led Wolf to weave the same materials into a different fabric, still more finely spun. The passage holds another rising phrase ending, suggesting still further wonderment. The pianist repeats the prelude and Wolf, departing from his customary strict adherence to the poet's exact words and order, rightly repeats the singer's opening cadence, this time to be sung with even deeper reverence, rapt and contemplative. So softly is this to be sung that the phrase can vaporize if the singer's technique is faulty. When, however, the singer can spin the sound into infinity while maintaining a core to the tone, the song can move the listener to tears. In this song, Wolf caught and held an aura so rarefied and so elusive that Schlafendes Jesuskind must be ranked as one of the most sublime experiences to be found in all of music.

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28.Gebet ('Herr! schicke was du willt')

Completed on March 13, 1888, Gebet (Prayer) is just that, conceived and constructed with the simplest of means, beginning as a hymn in four parts, harmonized with great economy, and suffused with an uncomplicated faith that both happiness and sorrow come from the Lord's hand. Later, however, the text and music, the latter closely following the poem, grow more introspective as the supplicant asks that neither one nor the other overwhelm him, neither too much joy nor too much woe. Here, the music wanders somewhat as the singer voices the understanding that the middle way ("in der Mitten," sung twice) constitutes the "holdes Bescheiden." This expression may be understood as "propitious," "sweet," or "favorable" response. Wolf biographer Frank Walker maintained that the song "begins rather feebly," but later improves. The suggestion has been made that, had he approached this text at a later date, Wolf would have treated the second part differently. Perhaps so, but during this first, mighty surge of creativity, during which he feverishly set two volumes of poems by Eduard Mörike, this was his honest response and it carries sufficient conviction and sufficient sophistication to satisfy the demanding listener. There is no gainsaying the heartfelt conception as it plays itself out in the second part in both the vocal line and the piano part. The latter does not merely follow, but assumes its own sympathetic embrace of the voice, supporting and seconding the singer's modest plea for the middle way before subsiding with the singer into reverent conclusion. To a composer so beset by manic highs followed by periods of crippling depression, the text must have held a particular appeal. Mörike, whose works exhibit a genius for diversity, created in this poem an aspiration to the emotional equilibrium that his own life had in too little measure. Gebet was composed by Wolf on the day he also produced Verborgenheit, another song that met with quick and enduring favor, but that troubled Wolf advocates (and the composer himself) for their perception that both text and music are lacking in subtlety. As with most of Wolf's songs, a prosaic and uncomprehending approach will scuttle the viability of Gebet. The singer who wishes to impress an audience with organ-like tones will vocalize right past the humble, devotional mien that holds the listener rapt. Over-emoting during the more expansive second section can too readily turn the song into parody. A beautiful voice is no less welcome here than in Schubert or Brahms, but the interpretive requirements are more specific, more subtle. Gebet has become one of Wolf's most frequently performed songs. On its own terms, it creates a moment in which moderation is the focus, a subject about which one can still be fervent.

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36.Lebe wohl ('Lebe wohl! Du fühlest nicht')

Another astonishing song from one of Wolf's most productive years, Lebe wohl (Farewell) was completed on the final day of March 1888. Wolf had all but barricaded himself inside the Perchtoldsdorf home of Heinrich Werner, alternately freezing and composing, emerging from time to time to accept the hospitality of those with warmer quarters (including the Werner family at another home) and firing off excited notes to his friend Edmund Lang reporting on his accomplishments. At the time, Wolf was deep into the works of Eduard Mörike (1804 - 1875), a Swabian poet whose writing was well known to the literati though less well known to the larger German populace. Wolf, a connoisseur of fine verse, was entranced by the exceptional gifts of the lyric poet: his facility for characterization, situation, emotional directness, and mastery of nearly every poetic form. In setting Lebe wohl, Wolf was taking hold of a biographical scrap from the poet's own life. Intensely heartfelt, the poem commemorates his parting from Luise Rau, with whom he enjoyed a relationship of some intensity and to whom he had been betrothed. Mörike's often feverish imagination persisted during a short career as a Protestant minister (he retired at age 39), fueled no doubt by his struggles with the tension that existed between church dogma and his own humanistic inclinations. Some time after Mörike married, his wife conceived an unwarranted jealousy for her sister who lived with the couple and the poet spent his final years impoverished and a stranger to happiness. Lebe wohl is a cry of deepest hurt, at its climax so scorching that the reader cannot but experience the author's anguish. Wolf set it perfectly, constructing the song on a three-note cadence chromatically falling in a grieving gesture. Heard first in the piano, it is picked up by the singer as the piano reinforces the line. The chording is mostly spare, thickening somewhat as the despair gives way to anxious recollection. The singer's love has casually said farewell, unthinkingly, not sensing the torment it has caused—said it with "leichtem Herzen" (a light heart). The words Lebe wohl are heard again, more agitated in emotion this time. The singer tells—in tortured, wandering phrases—that he has repeated the word a thousand times to himself, "in nimmersatte Qual" (in insatiable agony), breaking his heart in doing so. After the fierce outcry of "nimmersatte Qual," the singer instantly drops into a choked, grief-laden voicing of the final line. The effect is electrifying, provided that the singer observes the composer's markings. Twice more, the falling cadence is heard in the piano before the song withdraws into silence. Although Lebe wohl, like every Wolf song, demands discretion on the part of its interpreters, the singer should not stint on a heartfelt outpouring of emotion. The emotion is clearly there to be voiced.

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37.Heimweh

Hugo Wolf set two poems and titled them Heimweh (Longing for Home). The first, to a text by Eduard Mörike, was completed on April 1, 1888. The second, to a poem by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, was composed nearly six months later. Of the two, the Mörike song is the finer, largely because the text was more inspired and inspiring. In this song, Wolf catches the weary, tortured mental state of the traveler who plods onward, away from his beloved and into an inhospitable world. Several musicologists have commented on the similarities to Schubert found in this song. Wolf was unlike Schubert in most aspects, but Wolf was nothing if not adaptable, and in this lyrical outpouring of youthful grief, he precisely struck the aura conjured by his great predecessor, especially in his two tragic song cycles. Wolf differs from Schubert in his subtle harmonic variants that further heap despair onto the pathway this song so effortfully travels. With each step away from his beloved, the singer sighs, the world is altered, and his heart resists going on. In this place, even the sun is cold and everything is strange and false, even the flowers. The stream tells him (a conceit that recalls Schubert) that flowers grow here, also. True, the singer admits, but they are not so lovely as there. On he trudges, blinded by his tears. For the sweet heaviness of this text, Wolf conceived a grief-filled, hesitant tread. A single bar of piano introduction leads to a descending, burden-filled cadence. The tone struggles toward hopefulness from time to time, only to once more fall away into bleak despair. Wolf's more sophisticated concept of harmony (coming to fruition, of course, some six decades after Schubert's death) adds even more anguish to the experience. The protagonists in Schubert's songs suffer intensely, but straightforwardly. With Wolf, the unsettling harmonies add a dimension of psychological torment beyond that found Schubert's music. Hesitant little ascents, mostly in the accompaniment, serve as the traveler's thoughts. They momentarily wander from his despair, only to be crushed each time by the renewed realization that he is bound away from everything dear. As tears flow, the singer falters. The piano, however, plods onward for several starkly tragic measures.

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46.Gesang Weylas ('Du bist Orplid, mein Land')

Music writer Eric Sams described this masterpiece as "less a song than an incantation." Indeed, no other word suffices for this enchanted and enchanting evocation of the mythical isle of Orplid as conjured by its guardian goddess, Weylas. Composer Hugo Wolf was sensitive to fine poetry to a degree unmatched by any other creator of song and for Swabian poet Eduard Mörike's fantastical verse, he provided a setting of marble-like grandeur and perfection. Here, the singer is called upon for the loftiest, most visionary utterance; an earthbound interpretation is doomed from the very beginning. A purely lyric voice is inadequate—only the grandest, most ennobled of vocal instruments should be applied to this task. The four arpeggiated piano chords that are strummed harp-like before the singer enters are both economical in design and suggestive of the shining invocation to come. The solemnity and high purpose are immediately revealed as the singer voices the first eight syllables of the text on a single note before moving a note above, then higher still on "ferne leuchtet" (shining in the distance). The description of the mist above the sea, "vom Meere dampfet" also resides on a single tone before the voice slightly rises, then descends like the vapors it describes as bathing the countenances of the gods. "Uralte Wasser" (primeval waters) sounds from the voice's lower regions before the vocal line writhes up and about, gleaming forth on the word "Könige" (Kings who bow before your godhead). As those last phrases are voiced, the singing line sinks and recedes into an aura of awed stillness as the piano's strumming, too, gradually fades to the end. Hugo Wolf completed this song on October 9, 1888, as part of the second batch of songs set to texts by Mörike in a year of extraordinary productivity. As his poetical tastes were of the highest order, he looked to his interpreters for similar receptivity and perception. He found a few singers whose intelligence and musicianship were similarly honed, but was more often than not disappointed by those whose first concern was display of voice. Requiring utmost restraint, his songs collapse under obvious, pedestrian presentation. In Gesang Weylas, the singer must control the dynamics, increasing and diminishing volume in small increments and above all, resisting the temptation to make a strenuous sforzando on the critical word "Könige." A modest increase in sound, together with the most-concentrated inner intensity serves the music far more eloquently. Though seeming simple enough, Wolf's harmonic movement—sometimes chaste, sometimes tortured—magically aligns itself with the interior meaning of the texts he chose. Thus, this song reveals how futile it is to speak of a "Wolf style." His approaches were as varied as the poems he set, and Gesang Weylas evokes a world never before and never again visited by the composer.

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50.Auftrag

Wolf's comic songs are sometimes self-deprecating in their silliness, but in a charming manner, one that makes it clear the composer was as entertained as the listener. The text is a versified letter from Morike (a poet whose works Wolf often set), asking "desperately" for any messages or news of his sweetheart, and the pace is appropriately rushed, at times close to a patter-song speed, with occasional mock-dramatic flourishes from the piano. Each verse is fairly similar, but with slight differences, emphasizing that while the words of each verse vary, the sentiments remain the same. The accompaniment is very close to a dance, urgent but nonetheless cheerful, almost jaunty.

© Anne Feeney, All Music Guide

51.Bei einer Trauung

This song, another Eduard Mörike Lied that tumbled from Hugo Wolf's pen on March 1, 1888, is a vivid example of the composer's ability to exactly match the tone of the text, to probe between the poet's lines and capture every implication. The atmosphere in Bei einer Trauung (At a Wedding) is oppressive as a ponderous march (a funeral march, really) prepares the way for the singer to tell his tale of a wedding between two cripplingly mismatched people. Wolf captured the poet's dry, matter-of-fact reportage interspersed with wry commentary on the disaster unfolding before the "select and privileged" gathering. The narrator notes that while the organ loft may be stuffed with violins, he swears that heaven won't be. Look, the singer interjects, she is weeping frightfully while he makes an atrocious face. Truly, truly, no love exists between them! Some Wolf scholars have considered this humorous vignette heavy handed, yet in the hands of a subtle singer and a pianist who can mine the intricacies of the accompaniment without unduly underlining what Wolf had so scrupulously fashioned, the song is a gift. The narration in the poem itself insists on a simple, uninflected delivery, while the commentaries should have the effect of asides. The voice maintains its volume so that words do not fall into inaudibility, but the inflections inform the listener that there is a wrenchingly hilarious aspect to this tale—and that the singer is only too delighted to share it. This song was completed four days after Zur Warnung (To Offer a Warning) and a week before Abschied (Farewell), two other Mörike songs of grotesque humor that some believe flirt with musical burlesque. In Mörike, Wolf discovered a poet of rare lyric refinement and range, one also imbued with a passionate involvement with his works. Mörike was no dilettante. A Protestant minister who became increasingly torn between church doctrine and his own humanistic leanings, he was a man of febrile sensitivity and a writer serious about what he put on paper. His gifts eventually would have established him as one of Germany's finest poets, but Wolf's setting of his texts hastened recognition beyond his native Swabia. When placed together with Zur Warnung and Abschied, Bei einer Trauung seems approachable enough. Whereas Zur Warnung recounts a wildly distressful episode of delirium tremens and Abschied a hallucinatory encounter with a "critic" (both placing the narrator as principal in the scenario), Bei einer Trauung is an observation, a commentary. No vocal contortions are needed, only a variation in tone color as the observer becomes interpreter. Amidst the persistent 4/4 pulse of the piano part (accompaniment is too casual a term), myriad subtleties may be identified, notably Wolf's use of the augmented fifth (übermässig in German) to suggest bathos, the same device Wolf used elsewhere to indicate pathos.

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