Classical Music | Baritone

Hugo Wolf

Geselle, woll’n wir uns in Kutten hüllen, from the Italienisches Liederbuch  Play

Benjamin Appl Baritone
Jonathan Ware Piano

Recorded on 07/01/2010, uploaded on 10/24/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Hugo Wolf composed the forty-six songs of his Italienisches Liederbuch between 1890 and 1896. Wolf selected the poems to set from music from a collection of anonymous Italian poetry translated by Paul Heyse, who also translated many of the poems in the composer’s Spanisches Liederbuch. The first twenty-two songs were composed between September 1890 and December 1891, and comprise Volume I of the collection. These were published the succeeding year. Volume II, consisting of the remaining twenty-four songs, however, was composed after a lengthy hiatus in 1896. Despite the four-year gap between the two volumes, Wolf managed to achieve a remarkably unified style across the entire collection, in large part due to the amorous nature of virtually the entire collection.

 Geselle, woll’n wir uns in Kutten hüllen” (“Friend, shall we wrap ourselves in cloaks”), the fourteenth song of Volume I, is one of two that incorporates a religious element. The poet speaks to his friend of forsaking the world to become priests. He imagines their journey of going door to door until they come to a home with a sick child, at which point he implores that they are allowed to enter to hear the child’s last confessions. In D major, Wolf represents the poet and his priestly aspirations not with religious piety, but with a dotted-eighth motif, heard in the bass, that leaves its own seriousness in question, and paints the musings of the poet as simply that. To musically distinguish the four lines of dialogue presumably spoken by some wary homeowner, Wolf omits the priests’ motif, and the piano provides instead a tenuously chromatic, chordal accompaniment that, within its short span, passes through several different keys. The bass motif returns as the priest makes his supplication to hear the poor child’s confessions, after which the music fades away slowly to end on a quiet D major chord.     Joseph DUBose


Steans Music Institute

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.