Classical Music | Mezzo-Soprano

Recorded on 08/11/2011, uploaded on 09/26/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Between 1890 and 1896, Hugo Wolf produced the forty-six songs that make up his Italienisches Liederbuch (Italian Songbook). The first twenty-two were composed between September 1890 and December 1891, and make up Volume I of the collection. They were published in 1892. Volume II, consisting of the remaining twenty-four songs, was composed in 1896. Despite this lengthy hiatus between the two volumes, Wolf managed to achieve a remarkably unified style across the entire collection. In part, this was due to the nature of the texts. Wolf selected the poems to set to music, which except for one were all love poems in some fashion, from a collection of anonymous Italian poetry translated into German by Paul Heyse, who also translated many of the poems in his Spanisches Liederbuch.

Occupying the position of the last song of Volume II, “Ich hab' in Penna einen Liebsten” is a short, comical poem about the poet’s many lovers, spread throughout the cities of Italy. At its conclusion, he proudly boasts of having four in La Fratta and ten Castiglione. A lively and vigorous accompaniment, which no doubt Wolf intended as caricature of Italian operatic music, supports an equally energetic but grandiose vocal melody. From F major, the song moves to D minor at the beginning of the fifth line. This departure, however, is only to effect a rather ostentatious return to the tonic key, followed by the final boastful declaration of ten lovers in Castiglione rendered with a brazen leap upward to a high A in the vocal melody and an ad libitum descent through the tonic triad. In a mocking imitation of Italian flourishes, the piano provides an energetic coda of sprightly arpeggios and repeated chords.     Joseph DuBose