Hugo Wolf

Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (; ; 13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer, 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. Life Early life (1860–1887) Hugo Wolf was born in Windischgrätz in the Duchy of Styria (now Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia), then a part of the Austrian Empire. His baptismal entry records him as Hugo Philip. Jacob. Wolf, the son of Filip Wolf and Katharina (née Nußbaumer) Wolf. Herbert von Karajan was related to him on his maternal side. He spent most of his life in Vienna, becoming a representative of a “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 begi