Songs (selected)

Program Note:

Hugo Wolf is best remembered today for his enormous and unparalleled production of late-Romantic lieder. He succeeded in adapting the expressive, chromatic musical language of Wagner to the intimate timbres and subtlety of the salon song. Often noted for the intensity of their expression, Wolf’s lieder were strongly influential on the succeeding generations of German and Austrian composers, most notably the Second Viennese School surrounding Arnold Schoenberg. But while sympathetic in emotional content, Wolf’s harmonic style remains grounded in tonality even as he pushes the boundaries of functional relationships from one chord to another. Certain features are fundamental, and the three lieder heard this evening demonstrate the consistency of his idiolect.
Often choosing poignant or emotionally “dark” poems, Wolf favors minor key settings and slow tempos. The textures are equally dark, low in register, and built upon tightly spaced chords (pianists will remark the frequency of overlapped hands). Above all else, perhaps, Wolf exposes the expressive power of the semitone: not only does the semitone muddy the harmonic progression, for centuries it has signified a human sigh when presented as a falling interval. Semitones, an aspect of chromatic composition, help fill out the pitch universe, such that all 12 tones of the Western musical system are more or less equally “in play.” It is an aesthetic integral to Wagner and soon codified by Schoenberg.
Note the slow piano introduction to “Alles endet, was entstehet,” with its initial semitone sounding like a tolling bell and the way the voice slides ever lower through chromatic passing tones. It is as if the chromaticism wrenches every drop of emotion out of narrow melodic contours. The song is not without its diatonic moments, but cadences occur infrequently and usually involve an altered harmony or two. “Fühlt meine Seele” similarly opens with a crucial semitone motive. The vocal writing looks back more directly to Schubert and Schumann, and the brightening to E major on “Klang” sounds momentarily out of character until the pervasive semitones begin to work their magic. The piece benefits from fluctuations in tempo that parallel the protagonist’s uneven emotional state. Like Schubert’s lied “Der Neugierige” performed at the Festival Gala, the text here speaks of a “Ja” and a “Nein,” a pointed question about the future possibility of requited love.
“Verborgenheit,” one of Wolf’s very best pieces, could easily have been composed alongside the two Michelangelo-Lieder we have heard. Its piano introduction features falling semitones (B-flat to A, G to F-sharp) that bring to the fore the text’s prevailing emotions: pain and resignation. Moreover, the opening measure of the vocal line exactly imitates the very beginning of “Fühlt meine Seele” in both melodic intervals and rhythm. The rounded ABCA design of “Verborgenheit” reinforces the circular nature of the protagonist’s thoughts. Section A sits statically over a tonic pedal, but he finds room to negotiate a melodic breakthrough on Wonne (rapture). Sections B and C section are far more agitated, more homophonic, and range more widely into non-tonic keys. A touch of tone painting may be heard in the piano’s gradual ascent to radiant chords on the word Licht. Wolf ends the turmoil of section C with a familiar arrival on tonic 6/4 harmony, which signals the imminent reprise of section A.