The ITALIAN AND SPANISH SONGS OF WOLF
Sung by WINIFRED RADFORD (Soprano) and SUMNER AUSTIN
(Baritone)
SUMNER AUSTIN
Italian :
Und steht Ihr früh am Morgen auf (When in the early Morning)
Dor Mond hat eine schwere Klag' erhoben
(The Moon hath been most grievously complaining)
Gesegnet sei, clurch dem die
Welt entstund (Give praise to Him through Whom the World)
Nun lass uns Frieden schliessen
(My dearest Life, now let us)
Ein Standchen Euch zu bringen (A Serenade to sing you)
Schon streekt' ich aus im Bolt die müden Ulieder (When Day is done)
Und willst du deinen Liebsten sterben sehen (If thou wouldst see thy Lover)
Ihr seid die Allerschonste (Indeed thou art the fairest)
English from tlte translations by Lily Henkel
HUGO WOLF died in 1903, but it is only within recent years that the recognition of his genius has become at all general. Now, however, there are many who declare that he is greater than Schubert, and consequently the greatest of all song-writeis. s. But to rank the very great in order of greatness is almost always unprofitable. To compare and contrast them as artists is better, for Wolf and Schubert had much in common. Both, for example, died young, and although Wolf lived twelve years longer, his period of active composition was shorter even than Schubert's, since Wolf wrote the greater part of his many hundred songs within a stretch of four years. Both of them, too, worked much in the same manner. Wolf would literally become possessed by the poem he was setting, as would Schubert Each composed with feverish, almost inhuman, rapidity, and without pause or hesitation. We have all read of the speed with which Schubert produced his songs, sometimes several in a day. Wolf did the same, and would often keep going in this manner for months at a time.
Where, however, Wolf differed from Schubert and from all his predecessors was that Wolf was at the same time both poet and musician.
He was the first composer to regard the poem as an integral part of the whole and of equal importance with the music, whereas Schubert makes almost the whole of his appeal through the music alone. Wolf, on the other hand, set his poem so that, note for note, bar for bar, and phrase for phrase, the music interpreted 'he poem and the poem supplemented the music. He did not write for the voice accompanied by the piano, but for the voice ond piano as an inseparable whole.
Wolf's greatness lies not only in the beauty of the music of his songs, bat in his supreme faculty of piercing to the very heart of a poem and finding there the music that he sought.