Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1927-02)

The Phonograph Monthly Review 225 To the Members of the Chicago Phonograph Art Society: We, the members of the Chicago Gramophone Society, hereby in open meeting cordially invite you to join us in our next meeting which will in all probability be held early next month. Inasmuch as we feel that our interests and aims are much in accord, we hope that you will find our meetings not uninteresting. We will communicate to your Mr. White the date and place of our next meeting. This date may also be obtained from the Record Department of Lyon & Healy.” After the business meeting Mr. Robert Poliak read a paper on the life and music of Hugo Wolf, which proved of such interest that it is incorporated in this report: “We have a picture, usually an all too mythical one, of the Great Genius, a man who is slowly ravaged by disease and poverty, a man who cannot withstand the clear, burning light inside his own brain, a man who composes music or writes poetry in the white heat of a moment of inspiration. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this is a farcical repro- duction of the artist. You know the old adage about genius being nine-tenths perspiration. Curiously enough the genius of Hugo Wolf was the story book kind. And the sad history of his few days on earth reads like the story book conception of the elect among men. “Wolf was born in Windischgrats in Styria, March 13, 1860. His father was a dealer in leather, but like the fathers of so many great musicians Phillip Wolf was a musician himself. He played the violin, the guitar and the piano and often quintet parties were held at the house in which various relations performed on as many instruments and young Hugo, himself, played the second violin. The nearness of the province to North Italy was the probable reason for the family’s predilection for the great bel canto masters like Bellini and Rossini, and later in life Wolf used to imagine he had a drop of Mediterranean blood somewhere in his veins. “The boy’s term of school and his apprenticeship were in no wise remarkable He was not a stupid student, not a worth- less one, but he was very reserved, little caring for intimate companionship and utterly absorbed in a growing love for music. He got permission to go to the Vienna Conservatoire for two years but was little the better for his experience and was sent away for being unruly. About the same time the saddlery of his father was destroyed by fire, and young Wolf was left on his uppers and with no means of livelihood other than an occasional pittance from home and the revenue from teaching for which he was temperamentally and physically unfitted. His quick and easy intelligence bent to the work of studying the scores of the great masters. Amid scenes of great privation, roughly between the age of twenty and thirty, he formed his tastes of literature and music, pouring over the works of Goethe and of Eduard Morike, the gentle Suabian pastor whom he was later to immortalize, and study- ing the works of Beethoven and Berlioz and the creations in lieder of Schubert and Schumann. “But of all musical influences that bent to shape this great genius of song the most important was Wagner. In 1875 the composer of the Ring, a storm center of controversy and the hope of young Germany, came to Vienna to conduct Lohen- grin and Tannhauser. In a letter to his parents young Wolf tells of his reception: “ T have been to — guess whom? ... to the master, Richard Wagner! Now I will tell you all about it, just as it happened. I will copy the words down exactly as I wrote them in my note-book. “ ‘On Thursday, 9 December, at half-past ten, I saw Richard Wagner for the second time at the Hotel Imperial, where I stayed for half an hour on the staircase, awaiting his arrival (I knew that on that day he would conduct the last rehearsal of his Lohengrin). At last the master came down from the second floor, and I bowed to him very respectfully while he was yet some distance from me. He thanked me in a very friendly way. As he neared the door I sprang forward and opened it for him, upon which he looked fixedly at me for a few seconds, and then went on his way to the rehearsal at the Opera. I ran as fast as I could, and arrived at the Opera sooner than Richard Wagner did in his cab. I bowed to him again, and I wanted to open the door of his cab for him; but as I could not get it open, the coachman jumped down from his seat and did it for me. I wanted to follow him into the theatre, but they would not let me pass. “ T often used to wait for him at the Hotel Imperial; and on this occasion I made the acquaintance of the manager of the hotel, who promised that he would interest himself on my behalf. Who was more delighted than I when he told me on the following Saturday afternoon, 11 December, I was to come and find him, so that he could introduce me to Mme. Cosima’s maid and Richard Wagner’s valet! I arrived at the appointed hour. The visit to the lady’s maid was very short. I was advised to come the following day, Sunday, 12 December, at two o’clock. I arrived at the right hour, but found the maid and the valet and the manager still at table. Then I went with the maid to the master’s rooms, where I waited for about a quarter of an hour until he came. At last Wagner appeared in company with Cosima and Goldmark. I bowed to Cosima very respectfully, but she evidently did not think it worth while to honour me with a single glance. Wagner was going into his room without paying any attention to me, when the maid said to him in a beseeching voice: ‘Ah, Herr Wagner, it is a young musician who wishes to speak to you; he has been waiting for you a long time.’ “ ‘He then came out of his room, looked at me and said: ‘I have seen you before, I think. You are . . . ’ “ ‘Probably he wanted to say, ‘You are a fool.’ “ ‘He went in front of me and opened the door of the reception-room, which was furnished in a truly royal style. In the middle of the room was a couch covered in velvet and silk. Wagner himself was wrapped in a long velvet mantle bordered with fur. “ ‘When I was inside the room he asked me what I wanted. “ ‘I said to him: ‘Highly honoured master, for a long time I have wanted to hear an opinion on my compositions, and it would be ... ’ “ ‘Here the master interrupted me and said: ‘My dear child, I cannot give you an opinion of your compositions; I have far too little time; I can’t even get my own letters written. I understand nothing at all about music.’ “ ‘I asked the master whether I should ever be able really to do anything, and he said to me: ‘When I was your age and composing music, no one could tell me then whether I should ever do anything great. You could at most play me your compositions on the piano; but I have no time to hear them. When you are older, and when you have composed bigger works, and if by chance I return to Vienna, you shall show me what you have done. But that is no use now; I cannot give you an opinion of them yet.’ “ ‘When I told the master that I took the classics as models, he said: ‘Good, good. One can’t be original at first.’ And he laughed, and then said, ‘I wish you, dear friend, much happiness in your career. Go on working steadily, and if I come back to Vienna, show me your compositions.’ “ ‘Upon that I left the master, profoundly moved and im- pressed.’ “This interview, really little more than a mild snub by the elder master, the young man never forgot. “In 1881 Wolf had a brief engagement as Assistant Kapell- meister at Salzburg under Karl Muck. But he was unsatis- factory and in 1884 he added slightly to his income and greatly to h : s enemies by taking the post of music critic on the Wiener Salonblatt, a paper chiefly devoted to horse racing and female fashions. Here he incurred the enmity of Hans- lick and the Brahmins by his attacks on Brahms, a piece of less majesty that the Austrian critics were never to forgive. Indeed it was described by Hans von Bulow as ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost’. Yet Wolf’s little articles were sprightly and fuil of life, ardently championing Beethoven and Wagner, and excoriating the operatic Italians, then so popular in Vienna. And in view of his subsequent develop- ment it is easy to understand his antipathy for Brahms. “In 1887 a few friends helped him to finance his first volume of songs. They were received indifferently and from that time on, as he left the Salonblatt the same year, his outward life was uneventful. He was appreciated in Vienna by a few talented amateurs and made a partial success of his opera “Der Corregidor” which was rich in harmonic beauty but lacking in ‘sense of the theatre’. But he was not to have much more time. In 1897, while working on the score of his second opera “Manuel Venegas”, he began to display signs of insanity and the next day he was quietly taken to a private institution. He was discharged in 1898 and apparently cured, but it soon became clear to him that such was not the case, and a little later at his own request he was shut up inside the grim walls for the last time. Here he remained for four