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. Mueller 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.
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