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. Mueller 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 Moerike,
komponiert fuer eine Singstimme und Klavier_ (1888), the first published,
is the most popular.
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