Over 1,000 pages, Richard Stokes has achieved his goal of reuniting for the first time the 350 songs he composed. Hugo Wolfeach containing the original German poem, its Spanish translation, and a set of supplementary texts, which, in that order placed by the poet, specifically explain Wolff’s emphasis on the music of these poems, and reproduced in the original version and in Spanish on Wolff’s pages that link to him.
The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf
Richard Stokes
Translated by Luis Gaga
Acantilado, 2026. 1,040 pages. €38
En este escapadeStokes adds three minutes of chronological tables: of Wolfe’s life, his cards, and his songs, as well as accurate notes and indexes, and brief descriptions of card recipients. As Ian Bostridge says in the prologue to this book, “detailed and absorbing”it is the best front door in Hugo Wolf’s work. The excellent Spanish translation is the work of Luis Gaga.
Junto with his contemporary Mahler Hugo Wolf marks the end of their saga lieder players. He is the last of the great ten composers (Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms) who stylishly rendered the works of great poets (Goethe, Eichendorff, Rückert, Heine, Mörike) or exotic songs.
If Wolf did not lack the omnipresence of his colleagues, then certainly because, unlike them, he completely limited himself to writing songs, in his own style, unique harmony and restless rhythm. Stokes follows his own Wolf and explains their nature lie: “The center of gravity of my songs, Wolf tells Karl Mayr on paper, is found in the piano part“, he says, ¡no en el canto!
His invention is properly pianistic as Wagner’s is orchestral: both, the vocal is subordinated in importance to the instrumental. Stéphane Goldet thus defines the mystery of Wolf’s creative process: the poem turns, permeates, as we can say, in the sound of the piano. Subsequently, as soon as the sound dramaturgy is born, a song is created that concretizes it in melody and words.
The respect Wolf felt for the poets was shown at his concerts, and he recited the verses before they began.
No wonder Wolf knew them as “Wagner of the piano”. This instrumental distillation of the text is not a larger form of embodiment of Goethe’s recipe: that music is served by words. The respect Wolf felt for the work of the poets was reflected in his liturgy of the concert: every time songBefore accompanying the singer I Heard You on the piano, Wolf recited a poem.
The structure of the book greatly facilitates consultation in accordance with the author’s intention: to do lie de Wolf more accessible to the public. Combat immeasurable fame arides these songsPossessed of the gift of enumeration, Stokes recounts at length onomatopeyas, sonorous and witty analogies that contain “as seductive as Schubert’s”: pájaros, laúdes, disparos, rebuznos, zumbidos de abeja, street turns, cigüeñas polascitorantes, treatises on music criticism (let me note that Wolf did this), and so on.
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