The same poem, one more song (VIII)

When we talk about Hugo Wolf’s Lieder, we begin to explain them since February 1888, from the Mörike-Lieder, his first great collection. But the composer, who was then twenty-eight years old, had already composed a good handful of Lieder while searching for his own voice (for instance we listened a while ago to Zur Ruh', zur Ruh', from 1883). Some Lieder composed in the years before 1888 were incorporated by Wolf into his publications, such as a part of the Eichendorff-Lieder, but most remained unpublished in his lifetime.

Looking through the list, we find a few that we could incorporate into this series, The same poem, one more song. Unlike the years after that, when Wolf rarely composed upon poems previously set to music, in this first stage he often went through it, probably as part of his learning.

That is how we arrived in 1876. Wolf wrote twenty-one lieder during that year, the last three of which were the first with a poem by Heinrich Heine, all three from the Buch der Lieder. For this week, I have chosen the penultimate piece, Du bist wie eine Blume, composed on 18 December. When we read this title, we think of Schumann, of course. Surely that sixteen-year-old boy who arrived in Vienna just over a year before also thought about him.

We will listen to Hugo Wolf's Du bist wie eine Blume performed by Stephan Genz and Roger Vignoles. We don't often go back to those earlier, neglected years of the composer, but don’t you think it’s another way to get to know his work?