Hugo Wolf

Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

Though he had several bursts of extraordinary productivity, particularly in 1888 and 1889, depression frequently interrupted his creative periods, and his last composition was written in 1898, before he suffered a mental collapse caused by syphilis.

Hugo Wolf was born in Windischgrätz in the Duchy of Styria (now Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia), then a part of the Austrian Empire. From his maternal side, he was related to Herbert von Karajan. He spent most of his life in Vienna, becoming a representative of "New German" trend in Lieder, a trend which followed from the expressive, 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 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 for "breach of discipline," although the oft-rebellious Wolf would claim he quit in frustration over the school's conservatism.

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