happiness was in creation, and he saw his life cease, without any
apparent cause, for years together, and his genius come and go, and
return for an instant, and then go again. Each time he must have
anxiously wondered if it had gone for ever, or how long it would be
before it came back again. In letters to Kaufmann on 6 August, 1891, and
26 April, 1893, he says:
"You ask me for news of my opera.[188] Good Heavens! I should be
content if I could write the tiniest little _Liedchen_. And an
opera, now?... I firmly believe that it is all over with me.... I
could as well speak Chinese as compose anything. It is horrible....
What I suffer from this inaction I cannot tell you. I should like
to hang myself."
To Hugo Faisst he wrote on 21 June, 1894:
"You ask me the cause of my great depression of spirit, and would
pour balm on my wounds. Ah yes, if you only could! But no herb
grows that could cure my sickness; only a god could help me. If you
can give me back my inspirations, and wake up the familiar spirit
that is asleep in me, and let him possess me anew, I will call you
a god and raise altars to your name. My cry is to gods and not to
men; the gods alone are fit to pronounce my fate. But however it
may end, even if the worst comes, I will bear it--yes, even if no
ray of sunshine lightens my life again.... And with that we will,
once for all, turn the page and have done with this dark chapter of
my life."
[Footnote 188: The writing of an opera was Wolf's great dream and
intention for many years.]
This letter--and it is not the only one--recalls the melancholy stoicism
of Beethoven's letters, and shows us sorrows that even the unhappy
Beethoven did not know. And yet how can we tell? Perhaps Beethoven, too,
suffered similar anguish in the sad days that followed 1815, before the
last sonatas, the _Missa Solemnis_, and the Ninth Symphony had awaked to
life in him.
* * * * *
In March, 1895, Wolf lived once more, and in three months had written
the piano score of _Corregidor_. For many years he had been attracted
towards the stage, and especially towards light opera. Enthusiast though
he was for Wagner's work, he had declared openly that it was time for
musicians to free themselves from the Wagnerian _Musik-Drama_. He knew
his own gifts, and did not aspire to take Wagner's place. When one of
his friends offered him a subject for an opera, taken from a legend
about Buddha, he declined it, saying that the world did not yet
understand the meaning of Buddha's doctrines, and that he had no wish to
give humanity a fresh headache. In a letter to Grohe, on 28 June, 1890,
he says:
"Wagner has, by and through his art, accomplished such a mighty
work of liberation that we may rejoice to think that it is quite
useless for us to storm the skies, since he has conquered them for
us. It is much wiser to seek out a pleasant nook in this lovely
heaven. I want to find a little place there for myself, not in a
desert with water and locusts and wild honey, but in a merry
company of primitive beings, among the tinkling of guitars, the
sighs of love, the moonlight, and such-like--in short, in a quite
ordinary _opéra-comique_, without any rescuing spectre of
Schopenhauerian philosophy in the background."
After having sought the libretto of an opera from the whole world, from
poets ancient and modern,[189] and after having tried to write one
himself, he finally took that of Madame Rosa Mayreder, an adaptation of
a Spanish novelette of Don Pedro de Alarcón. This was _Corregidor_,
which, after having been refused by other theatres, was played in June,
1896, at Mannheim. The work was not a success in spite of its musical
qualities, and the poorness of the libretto helped on its failure.
[Footnote 189: Detlev von Liliencron offered him an American subject.
"But in spite of my admiration for Buffalo Bill and his unwashed crew,"
said Wolf sarcastically, "I prefer my native soil and people who
appreciate the advantages of soap."]
But the main thing was that Wolf's creative genius had returned. In
April, 1896, he wrote straight away the twenty-two songs of the second
volume of the _Italienisches-Liederbuch_. At Christmas his friend Müller
sent him some of Michelangelo's poems, translated into German by Walter
Robert-Tornow; and Wolf, deeply moved by their beauty, decided at once
to devote a whole volume of _Lieder_ to them. In 1897 he composed the
first three melodies. At the same time he was also working at a new
opera, _Manuel Venegas_, a poem by Moritz Hoernes, written after the
style of Alarcón. He seemed full of strength and happiness and
confidence in his renewed health. Müller was speaking to him of the
premature death of Schubert, and Wolf replied, "A man is not taken away
before he has said all he has to say."
He worked furiously, "like a steam-engine," as he said, and was so
absorbed in the composition of _Manuel Venegas_ (September, 1897) that
he went without rest, and had hardly time to take necessary food. In a
fortnight he had written fifty pages of the pianoforte score, as well as
the _motifs_ for the whole work, and the music of half the first act.
Then madness came. On 20 September he was seized while he was working at
the great recitative of Manuel Venegas in the first act.
He was taken to Dr. Svetlin's private hospital in Vienna, and remained
there until January, 1898. Happily he had devoted friends who took care
of him and made up for the indifference of the public; for what he had
earned himself would not have enabled him even to die in peace. When
Schott, the publisher, sent him in October, 1895, his royalties for the
editions of his _Lieder_ of Mörike, Goethe, Eichendorff, Keller, Spanish
poetry, and the first volume of Italian poetry, their total for five
years came to eighty-six marks and thirty-five pfennigs! And Schott
calmly added that he had not expected so good a result. So it was Wolf's
friends, and especially Hugo Faisst, who not only saved him from misery
by their unobtrusive and often secret generosity, but spared him the
horror of destitution in his last misfortunes.
He recovered his reason, and was sent in February, 1898, for a voyage to
Trieste and Venetia to complete his cure and prevent him from thinking
of work. The precaution was unnecessary; for he says in a letter to Hugo
Faisst, written in the same month:
"There is no need for you to trouble yourself or fear that I shall
overdo things. A real distaste for work has taken possession of me,
and I believe I shall never write another note. My unfinished opera
has no more interest for me, and music altogether is hateful. You
see what my kind friends have done for me! I cannot think how I
shall be able to exist in this state.... Ah, happy Swabians! one
may well envy you. Greet your beautiful country for me, and be
warmly greeted yourself by your unhappy and worn-out friend, Hugo
Wolf."
When he returned to Vienna, however, he seemed to be a little better,
and had apparently regained his health and cheerfulness. But to his own
astonishment he had become, as he says in a letter to Faisst, a quiet,
sedate, and silent man, who wished more and more to be alone. He did not
compose anything fresh, but revised his Michelangelo _Lieder_, and had
them published. He made plans for the winter, and rejoiced in the
thought of passing it in the country near Gmunden, "in perfect quiet,
undisturbed, and living only for art." In his last letter to Faisst, 17
September, 1898, he says:
"I am quite well again now, and have no more need of any cures. You
would need them more than I."
Then came a fresh seizure of madness, and this time all was finished.
In the autumn of 1898 Wolf was taken to an asylum at Vienna. At first he
was able to receive a few visits and to enjoy a little music by playing
duets with the director of the establishment, who was himself a musician
and a great admirer of Wolf's works. He was even able in the spring to
take a few walks out of doors with his friends and an attendant. But he
was beginning not to recognise things or people or even himself. "Yes,"
he would say, sighing, "if only I were Hugo Wolf!" From the middle of
1899 his malady grew rapidly worse, and general paralysis followed. At
the beginning of 1900 his speech was affected, and, finally, in August,
1901, all his body. At the beginning of 1902 all hope was given up by
the doctors; but his heart was still sound, and the unhappy man dragged
out his life for another year. He died on 16 February, 1903, of
peripneumonia.
He was given a magnificent funeral, which was attended by all the people
who had done nothing for him while he was alive. The Austrian State, the
town of Vienna, his native town Windischgratz, the Conservatoire that
had expelled him, the _Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde_ who had been so
long unfriendly to his works, the Opera that had been closed to him, the
singers that had scorned him, the critics that had scoffed at him--they
were all there. They sang one of his saddest melodies, _Resignation_, a
setting of a poem of Eichendorff's, and a chorale by his old friend
Bruckner, who had died several years before him. His faithful friends,
Faisst at the head of them, took care to have a monument erected to his
memory near those of Beethoven and Schubert.
* * * * *
Such was his life, cut short at thirty-seven years of age--for one
cannot count the five years of complete madness. There are not many
examples in the art world of so terrible a fate. Nietzsche's misfortune
is nowhere beside this, for Nietzsche's madness was, to a certain
extent, productive, and caused his genius to flash out in a way that it
never would have done if his mind had been balanced and his health
perfect. Wolf's madness meant prostration. But one may see how, even in
the space of thirty-seven years, his life was strangely parcelled out.
For he did not really begin his creative work until he was twenty-seven
years old; and as from 1890 to 1895 he was condemned to five years'
silence, the sum total of his real life, his productive life, is only
four or five years. But in those few years he got more out of life than
the greater part of artists do in a long career, and in his work he left
the imprint of a personality that no one could forget after once having
known it.
* * * * *
Wolf's work consists chiefly, as we have already seen, of _Lieder_, and
these _Lieder_ are characterised by the application to lyrical music of
principles established by Wagner in the domain of drama. That does not
mean he imitated Wagner. One finds here and there in Wolf's music
Wagnerian forms, just as elsewhere there are evident reminiscences of
Berlioz. It is the inevitable mark of his time, and each great artist in
his turn contributes his share to the enrichment of the language that
belongs to us all. But the real Wagnerism of Wolf is not made up of
these unconscious resemblances; it lies in his determination to make
poetry the inspiration of music. "To show, above all," he wrote to
Humperdinck in 1890, "that poetry is the true source of my music."
When a man is both a poet and a musician, like Wagner, it is natural
that his poetry and music should harmonise perfectly. But when it is a
matter of translating the soul of other poets into music, special gifts
of mental subtlety and an abounding sympathy are needed. These gifts
were possessed by Wolf in a very high degree. No musician has more
keenly savoured and appreciated the poets. "He was," said one of his
critics, G. Kühl, "Germany's greatest psychologist in music since
Mozart." There was nothing laboured about his psychology. Wolf was
incapable of setting to music poetry that he did not really love. He
used to have the poetry he wished to translate read over to him several
times, or in the evening he would read it aloud to himself. If he felt
very stirred by it he lived apart with it, and thought about it, and
soaked himself in its atmosphere; then he went to sleep, and the next
morning he was able to write the _Lied_ straight away. But some poems
seemed to sleep in him for years, and then would suddenly awake in him
in a musical form. On these occasions he would cry out with happiness.
"Do you know?" he wrote to Müller, "I simply shouted with joy." Müller
said he was like an old hen after it had laid an egg.
Wolf never chose commonplace poems for his music--which is more than can
be said of Schubert or Schumann. He did not use anything written by
contemporary poets, although he was in sympathy with some of them, such
as Liliencron, who hoped very much to be translated into music by him.
But he could not do it; he could not use anything in the work of a great
poet unless he became so intimate with it that it seemed to be a part of
him.
What strikes one also in the _Lieder_ is the importance of the
pianoforte accompaniment and its independence of the voice. Sometimes
the voice and the pianoforte express the contrast that so often exists
between the words and the thought of the poem; at other times they
express two personalities, as in his setting of Goethe's _Prometheus_,
where the accompaniment represents Zeus sending out his thunderbolts,
and the voice interprets Titan; or again, he may depict, as in the
setting of Eichendorff's _Serenade_, a student in love in the
accompaniment, while the song is the voice of an old man who is
listening to it and thinking of his youth. But in whatever he is
describing, the pianoforte and the voice have always their own
individuality. You cannot take anything away from his _Lieder_ without
spoiling the whole; and it is especially so with his instrumental
passages, which give us the beginning and end of his emotion, and which
circle round it and sum it up. The musical form, following closely the
poetic form, is extremely varied. It may sometimes express a fugitive
thought, a brief record of a poetic impression or some little action, or
it may be a great epic or dramatic picture. Müller remarks that Wolf put
more into a poem than the poet himself--as in the
_Italienisches-Liederbuch_. It is the worst reproach they can make about
him, and it is not an ordinary one. Wolf excelled especially in setting
poems which accorded with his own tragic fate, as if he had some
presentiment of it. No one has better expressed the anguish of a
troubled and despairing soul, such as we find in the old harp-player in
_Wilhelm Meister_, or the splendid nihility of certain poems of
Michelangelo.
Of all his collections of _Lieder_, the 53 _Gedichte von Eduard Mörike,
komponiert für eine Singstimme und Klavier_ (1888), the first published,
is the most popular. It gained many friends for Wolf, not so much among
artists (who are always in the minority) as among those critics who are
the best and most disinterested of all--the homely, honest people who
do not make a profession of art, but enjoy it as their spiritual daily
bread. There are a number of these people in Germany, whose hard lives
are beautified by their love of music. Wolf found these friends in all
parts, but he found most of them in Swabia. At Stuttgart, at Mannheim,
at Darmstadt, and in the country round about these towns he became very
popular--the only popular musician since Schubert and Schumann. All
classes of society unite in loving him. "His _Lieder_," says Herr
Decsey, "are on the pianos of even the poorest houses, by the side of
Schubert's _Lieder_." Stuttgart became for Wolf, as he said himself, a
second home. He owes this popularity, which is without parallel in
Swabia, to the people's passionate love of _Lieder_ and, above all, of
the poetry of Mörike, the Swabian pastor, who lives again in Wolf's
songs. Wolf has set to music a quarter of Mörike's poems, he has brought
Mörike into his own, and given him one of the first places among German
poets. Such was really his intention, and he said so when he had a
portrait of Mörike put on the title-page of the songs. Whether the
reading of his poetry acted as a balm to Wolf's unquiet spirit, or
whether he became conscious of his genius for the first time when he
expressed this poetry in music, I do not know; but he felt deep
gratitude towards it, and wished to show it by beginning the first
volume with that fine and rather Beethoven-like song, _Der Genesende an
die Hoffnung_ ("The Convalescent's Ode to Hope").
The fifty-one _Lieder_ of the _Goethe-Liederbuch_ (1888-89) were
composed in groups of _Lieder_: the _Wilhelm Meister Lieder_, the
_Divan (Suleika) Lieder_, etc. Wolf even tried to identify himself with
the poet's line of thought; and in this we often find him in rivalry
with Schubert. He avoided using the poems in which he thought Schubert
had exactly conveyed the poet's meaning, as in _Geheimes_ and _An
Schwager Kronos_; but he told Müller that there were times when Schubert
did not understand Goethe at all, because he concerned himself with
translating their general lyrical thought rather than with showing the
real nature of Goethe's characters. The peculiar interest of Wolf's
_Lieder_ is that he gives each poetic figure its individual character.
The Harpist and Mignon are traced with marvellous insight and restraint;
and in some passages Wolf shows that he has re-discovered Goethe's art
of presenting a whole world of sadness in a single word. The serenity of
a great soul soars over the chaos of passions.
The _Spanisches-Liederbuch nach Heyse und Geibel_ (1889-90) had already
inspired Schumann, Brahms, Cornelius, and others. But none had tried to
give it its rough and sensual character. Müller shows how Schumann,
especially, robbed the poems of their true nature. Not only did he
invest them with his own sentimentalism, but he calmly arranged poems of
the most marked individual character to be sung by four voices, which
makes them quite absurd; and, worse than this, he changed the words and
their sense when they stood in his way. Wolf, on the contrary, steeped
himself in this melancholy and voluptuous world, and would not let
anything draw him from it; and out of it he produced, as he himself
said proudly, some masterpieces. The ten religious songs that come at
the beginning of the collection suggest the delusions of mysticism, and
weep tears of blood; they are distressing to the ear and mind alike, for
they are the passionate expression of a faith that puts itself on the
rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family,
which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant,
restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a
different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the
whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the
_Spanisches-Liederbuch_ is to Wolf's work what _Tristan_ is to Wagner's
work.
The _Italienisches-Liederbuch_ (1890-96) is quite different. The
character of the songs is very restrained, and Wolf's genius here
approached a classic clearness of form. He was always seeking to
simplify his musical language, and said that if he wrote anything more,
he wished it to be like Mozart's writings. These _Lieder_ contain
nothing that is not absolutely essential to their subject; so the
melodies are very short, and are dramatic rather than lyrical. Wolf gave
them an important place in his work: "I consider them," he wrote to
Kaufmann, "the most original and perfect of my compositions."
As for the _Michelangelo Gedichten_ (1897), they were interrupted by the
outbreak of his malady, and he had only time to write four, of which he
suppressed one. Their associations are pathetic when one remembers the
tragic time at which they were composed; and, by a sort of prophetic
instinct, they exhale heaviness of spirit and mournful pride. The second
melody is perhaps more beautiful than anything else Wolf wrote; it is
truly his death-song:
_Alles endet, was entstehet.
Alles, alles rings vergehet_.[190]
And it is a dead man that sings:
_Menschen waren wir ja auch,
Froh und traurig, so wie Ihr.
Und nun sind wir leblos hier,
Sind nur Erde, wie Ihr sehet_.[191]
At the moment he was writing this song, in the short respite he had from
his illness, he himself was nearly a dead man.
[Footnote 190:
All that is begun must end,
All around will sometime perish.
[Footnote 191:
Once we were also men
Happy or sad like you;
Now life is taken from us,
We are only of earth, as you see.
_Chiunque nasce a morte arriva
Nel fuggir del tempo, e'l sole
Niuna cosa lascia viva....
Come voi, uomini fummo,
Lieti e tristi, come siete;
E or siam, come vedete,
Terra al sol, di vita priva_.
(Poems of Michelangelo, CXXXVI.)
* * * * *
As soon as Wolf was really dead his genius was recognised all over
Germany. His sufferings provoked an almost excessive reaction in his
favour. _Hugo-Wolf-Vereine_ were founded everywhere; and to-day we have
publications, collections of letters, souvenirs, and biographies in
abundance. It is a case of who can cry loudest that he always understood
the genius of the unhappy artist, and work himself into the greatest
fury against his traducers. A little later, and monuments and statues
will spring up all over.
I doubt if Wolf with his rough, sincere nature would have found much
consolation in this tardy homage if he could have foreseen it. He would
have said to his posthumous admirers: "You are hypocrites. It is not for
me that you raise those statues; it is for yourselves. It is that you
may make speeches, form committees, and delude yourselves and others
that you were my friends. Where were you when I had need of you? You let
me die. Do not play a comedy round my grave. Look rather around you, and
see if there are not other Wolfs who are struggling against your
hostility or your indifference. As for me, I have come safe to port."
DON LORENZO PEROSI
The winter that held Italian thought in its cold clasp is over, and
great trees that seemed to be asleep are putting out new life in the
sun. Yesterday it was poetry that awaked, and to-day it is music--the
sweet music of Italy, calm in its passion and sadness, and artless in
its knowledge. Are we really witnessing the return of its spring? Is it
the incoming of some great tide of melody, which will wash away the
gloom and doubt of our life to-day? As I was reading the oratorios of
this young priest of Piedmont, I thought I heard, far away, the song of
the children of old Greece: "The swallow has come, has come, bringing
the gay seasons and glad years. Ear êdê." I welcome the coming of Don
Lorenzo Perosi with great hope.
[Illustration: greek207]
* * * * *
The abbé Perosi, the precentor of St. Mark's chapel at Venice and the
director of the Sistine chapel, is twenty-six years old.[192] He is
short in stature and of youthful appearance, with a head a little too
big for his body, and open and regular features lighted up by
intelligent black eyes, his only peculiarity being a projecting
underlip.
[Footnote 192: This article was written in 1899, on the occasion of
Lorenzo Perosi's coming to Paris to direct his oratorio _La
Résurrection_.] He is simple-hearted and modest, and has a friendly
warmth of affection. When he is conducting the orchestra his striking
silhouette, his slow and awkward gestures in expressive passages, and
his naïve movements of passion at dramatic moments, bring to mind one of
Fra Angelico's monks.
For the last eighteen months Don Perosi has been working at a cycle of
twelve oratorios descriptive of the life of Christ. In this short time
he has finished four: _The Passion_, _The Transfiguration_, _The
Resurrection of Lazarus_, _The Resurrection of Christ_. Now he is at
work on the fifth--_The Nativity_.
These compositions alone place him in the front rank of contemporary
musicians. They abound in faults; but their qualities are so rare, and
his soul shines so clearly through them, and such fine sincerity
breathes in them, that I have not the courage to dwell on their
weaknesses. So I shall content myself with remarking, in passing, that
the orchestration is inadequate and awkward, and that the young musician
should strive to make it fuller and more delicate; and though he shows
great ease in composition, he is often too impetuous, and should resist
this tendency; and that, lastly, there are sometimes traces of bad taste
in the music and reminiscences of the classics--all of which are the
sins of youth, which age will certainly cure.