Scan 620
Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians Vol.5, 1925
6 lines. Read by computer on 12 September 2026. Printed page 556. See the scan on archive.org.
1obscure, and probably not uniform: it may result from some excess or defect in the thicknesses, from unequal elasticity in the wood, from bad proportion or imperfect adjustment of the fittings, or from some defect in the proportions of the air chamber. [It has also been suggested with a still greater show of probability that the wolf occurs on the note to which the body of the instrument acts as a resonating box, and that the particles of wood, set in vibration by this note, are unable to maintain the stretched string quite evenly.] It may be palliated by reducing some of the thicknesses so as to diminish the general vibration, and by as perfect as possible an adjustment of the bar, bridge, and sound-post; but in the opinion of violin-makers where it is once established it cannot be radically cured. Some instruments have what may be termed an anti-wolf, i.e. an excess of vibration on the very notes where the wolf ordinarily occurs. The writer has a violin which exhibits this phenomenon on the B and C above the stave. When these notes are played forte on any of the strings, the B or C an octave below is distinctly heard. This is probably a combinational tone due to the coalescence of the fundamental tone with that produced by the vibration of the string in each of its 2–3 parts. In some Forster violoncellos the wolf is so strong as to render them almost useless. E. J. P.
3WOLF, HUGO, was born at Windischgraz in the south of Styria on March 13, 1860. He was the fourth son of a father of musical tastes, who was in a family leather business, and who intended that the boy should eventually come into it too. At an early age, however, Hugo showed that his real interests were in music and literature, and his conduct at the various schools through which he passed disappointed his parents as much as his teachers. In 1875 the usual struggle over the question of his future career was fought, and ended in his father reluctantly consenting to let him enter the Vienna Conservatorium. One event in this year left a profound impression upon him. This was the visit of Wagner, who came to Vienna to conduct 'Tannhäuser' and 'Lohengrin.' He managed to see the great man for a moment, and although he got nothing for his pains but a more or less kindly snub, he became from this moment, and remained all his life, an ardent disciple. For the Conservatorium he had no more enthusiasm than he had for the schools, and he was expelled at the end of two years, which he had spent mainly in breaking the rules laid down for discipline and counterpoint. He was now thrown almost entirely on his own resources, for his father was able to do little for him, having had his business ruined by a fire. He eked out a living in his lodgings at Vienna by giving piano and violin lessons, but he could barely make enough to afford himself a meal a day, and the drudgery was so intolerable to him that he nearly emigrated to America. At this critical moment he was offered the post of second Capellmeister at Salzburg, mainly through the influence of the composer Adalbert von Goldschmidt, who, with Mottl and the two Schalks, was kind to him in these Vienna days, lending him music and helping him to obtain pupils. But though he took the post he was back again in Vienna in two months' time, composing songs and sketching out his symphonic poem 'Penthesilea.' Some of his early work, consisting of miscellaneous piano and orchestral music, as well as of songs, was found amongst his papers after his death, some of it he seems to have destroyed. The twelve 'Lieder aus der Jugendzeit' were written in 1877–78, and the collection of six 'Lieder für eine Frauenstimme' also dates from this period. But in these early years most of his time was given to reading rather than composing music. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, and the other classics he devoured eagerly; he worked hard at the songs of Schubert and Schumann, and for Berlioz and the French school he showed all his life such a predilection that he used to say in later years he must have had a few drops of Latin blood in his veins. He was able to make capital out of his strong musical tastes, for in 1886 he accepted the post of musical critic to the Vienna Salonblatt, and wrote for it for four years. He wrote, as well as felt, strongly, and while championing the cause of the older composers and breaking lances on behalf of Wagner and Bruckner, he poured scorn upon Boito, Ponchielli, and the contemporary Italian operatic writers, he jeered mercilessly at the Philistines and the purveyors of conventional goods, and earned the undying hatred of Bülow as well as of the anti-Wagnerians by the outspoken terms in which he proclaimed his dislike of Brahms. But Wolf would never have attained the peculiar position he now holds amongst the great song-writers if he had given his attention solely to music. As a boy he was devoted to books, and his catholic taste, controlled by sound instinct, soon made him acquainted with the great writers of France and England, no less than with those of Germany. His favourite German poets were Goethe, Eichendorff, Kleist, and Mörike, the popular Swabian pastor, who inspired Wolf to his first outburst of song-writing.
5This was in 1888, the turning-point in his career. He had lost his father in the previous year (who died just too soon to see the publication of his son's first two volumes of songs), he had given up writing for the Salonblatt and had established himself in a friend's house at Perchtoldsdorf, a little village near Vienna. Suddenly the flood-gates were opened, and between February and May of 1888 he wrote forty-three of his Mörike songs, and five months later finished the set in a single week, after composing a group of songs to words by Eichendorff. No
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