Classical Music | Baritone

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.

Closing Volume I is the charming “Ein Ständchen Euch zu bringen kam ich her” (“I come to serenade you”). The poet arrives at the home of his beloved and, begging the pardon of the master of the house, wishes to serenade his beloved. He implores that someone tell her, if she is already in bed, that he has come by, and that “in a day of twenty-four hours, I miss her twenty-five.” Wolf renders the lyrics of the unknown poet with a lively triple-meter melody, yet one with curious penchant for wandering easily away from its initial C major tonality. The accompaniment is relatively simple with its lilting bass and off-beat chords that follow the vocal melody in its tonal wanderings, and which diligently echoes the close of each of its phrases. During the last four lines of the poem, the music builds to a fortissimo climax on the final word, where Wolf sidesteps the anticipated cadence in C major, to dwell on an excited sixteen-bar passage in the key of the subdominant before finally bringing the song to a close.      Joseph DuBose

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