"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. Kuehl, "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.
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