Liederen, Songs, German - History and criticism, Vertonung, and Lyrik
Abstract
Composer Hugo Wolf produced one of the most important song collections of the 19th century when he set to music 53 poems by the German poet Eduard Morike. This text reappraises Wolf's work, examining the interplay of poetry and music.
MUSIC -- Printed Music -- General, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Composers & Musicians, Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.), Liederen, Receptie, Rezeption, and Biografie
Abstract
Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-159) and index In spite of growing interest in the songs of Hugo Wolf, there is still a lack of serious critical discussion of the nature of his achievements, in particular his relationship to Richard Wagner. Wolf has been regarded as a composer who followed the style and aesthetics of Wagnerian music drama without question, while writing in a genre often seen as less challenging than the symphony or opera. This book re-examines the evidence concerning Wolf's responses to Wagner and Wagnerism, and suggests ways in which he voiced his criticism through song and through his one completed opera, Der Corregidor. This opens up new insights into the kind of impact Wagner had on those following in his wake, and into the complexity and subtlety of the late nineteenth-century Lied. From this perspective, Wolf emerges as a persuasive and articulate figure, of wider musical and artistic significance than has yet been recognised Introduction -- 'Music of the future'?: The nature of the Wagnerian inheritance -- 'Wagner of the Lied'?: Wolf as critic of Wagner and Wagnerism -- Small things can also enchant us: Wolf's challenge to nineteenthcentury views of song -- 'Poetry the man, music the woman'? Wolf's reworking in his Morike songs of Wagner's aesthetics of words and music -- The integrity of musical language: questions of form and meaning in Wolf's Goethe songs -- The Wolfian perspective: comparisons with the songs of Strauss and Mahler
Songs, German -- History and criticism, MUSIC -- Printed Music -- General, Mörike-Lieder (Wolf, Hugo), Musical settings, Songs, German, and Songs, German -- History and criticism
Abstract
Includes bibliographical references (pages 190-198) and index 'Göttlicher Mörike!': an introduction to Eduard Mörike and Hugo Wolf -- Peregrina revisited: songs of love and madness -- Agnes's songs: the fictional misfortunes and musical fortunes of a nineteenth-century madwoman -- Sung desire: from Biedermeier erotica to fin-de-siècle lied -- Doubters and believers: case-studies in the geistliche Lieder
WOLF, Hugo, 1860-1903, COMPOSERS, HUGO Wolf (Book), WALKER, Frank, BIOGRAPHIES, PHOTOGRAPHS, and BOOKS reading
Abstract
The article presents the author's comments on Australian composer Hugo Wolf. Recently Frank Walker has written his biography titled "Hugo Wolf." The book nevertheless tells readers about Wolf's personality and behavior, his functioning as an artist, his terrible end and about the devotion and loyalty of some of the people he became involved with. The contents of the book are epitomized in three extraordinary photographs. One is the photograph of Frau Melanie Köchert, the woman who encouraged and consoled Wolf. The other two pictures show Wolf in 1889 when he was twenty-nine and at the point when Wolf produced his art works.
Hugo Wolf's song of Mignon, "Kennst du das Land," one of his good ones, is sung by Kerstin Thorborg with eloquence and beauty of voice, except for an occasional shrillness in a forced and constricted high note. The delightful art of Elsie Houston, with its delicate phrasing and little cries and glissandos, is to be heard in a volume of Brazilian songs--mostly enjoyable folk-songs, and one composed piece, Ovalle's "Berimbau," which the author find less interesting. Reiner's superb performance of Johann Strauss's "Wiener Blut" Waltz with the Pittsburgh Symphony is well recorded but hasn't the beauty of sound of the Ormandy-Philadelphia Orchestra performance on the recent Victor record.
MUSIC, SINGERS, PIANO, WOLF, Hugo, 1860-1903, SCHUMANN, Elisabeth, and MUSICIANS
Abstract
Hugo Wolf music records gain by the work of Paul Ulanofsky at the piano. One should listen to the mediocre playing on Lotte's Lehmanns' previous records, listen to the lifeless accompaniments, faintly recorded, on Elisabeth Schumann's records, and can realize that there is too little appreciation by singers and recording managers of the fact that the musical thought of a song of Schubert, of Schumann, of Hugo Wolf is carried by the piano as well as the voice, that the song, in other words, is an integration of the vocal and piano parts, that this integration must be achieved in the performance, and that it can be achieved only by two good musicians-in short, that the piano part must be well played and clearly heard.
COMPOSERS, WOLF, Hugo, 1860-1903, HUGO Wolf (Book), 50 Songs by Hugo Wolf (Book), BIBLIOGRAPHY (Documentation), and MUSIC in literature
Abstract
The article focuses on two books on composer Hugo Wolf. The books are "Hugo Wolf," by Ernest Newman and "Fifty Songs by Hugo Wolf," edited by Ernest Newman. When Hugo Wolf died, in 1907, a few of his 232 songs were sung by amateurs in Vienna and the cities of Germany, but to the world at large his name was unknown. The bibliography compiled by Newman for the volume of fifty songs edited by him includes twenty six books and essays in German. The real significance of Wolf's songs lies in this, that they illustrate the reaction in favor of poetry which set in with composer Richard Wagner's operatic reforms.
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