Wolf's views on Homer. Wolf, however, pursued his studies in the university library, from which he borrowed with his old avidity. During 1779-1783 Wolf was a schoolmaster, first at Ilfeld, then at Osterode. His success as a teacher was striking, and he found time to publish an edition of the Symposium of Plato, which excited notice, and led to his promotion (1783) to a chair in the Prussian university of Halle. The moment was a critical one in the history of education. The literary impulse of the Renaissance was almost spent, scholarship had become dry and trivial. A new school, that of Locke and Rousseau, sought to make teaching more modern and more human, but at the sacrifice of mental discipline and scientific aim. Wolf was eager to throw himself into the contest on the side of antiquity. In Halle (1783-1807), by the force of his will and the enlightened aid of the ministers of Frederick the Great, he was able to carry out his long-cherished ideas and found the science of philology. Wolf defined philology broadly as “knowledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity.” The matter of such a science, he held, must be sought in the history and education of some highly cultivated nation, to be studied in written remains, works of art, and whatever else bears the stamp of national thought or skill. It has therefore to do with both history and language, but primarily as a science of interpretation, in which historical facts and linguistic facts take their place in an organic whole. Such was the ideal which Wolf had in his mind when he established the philological semmarium at Halle.
Wolf's writings make little show in a library, and were always subordinate to his teaching. During his time at Halle he published his commentary on the Leptines of Demosthenes (1789)—which suggested to his pupil, Aug. Boeckh, the Public Economy of Athens—and a little later the celebrated Prolegomena to Homer (1795). This book, the work with which his name is chiefly associated, was thrown off in comparative haste to meet an immediate need. It has all the merits of a great piece of oral teaching—command of method, suggestiveness, breadth of view. The reader does not feel that he has to do with a theory, but with great ideas, which are left to bear fruit in his mind (see Homer). The publication led to an unpleasant polemic with Heyne, who absurdly accused him of reproducing what he had heard from him at Göttingen.
The Halle professorship ended tragically, and with it the happy and productive period of Wolf's life. He was swept away, and his university with him, by the deluge of the French invasion. A painful gloom oppressed his remaining years (1807-1824), which he spent at Berlin. He became so fractious and intolerant as to alienate some of his warmest friends. He gained a place in the department of education, through the exertions of W. von Humboldt. When this became unendurable, he once more took a professorship. But he no longer taught with his old success, and he wrote very little. His most finished work, the Darstellung der Alterthumswissenschaft, though published at Berlin (1807), belongs essentially to the Halle time. At length his health gave way. He was advised to try the south of France. He got as far as Marseilles, and, dying there on the 8th of August 1824, was laid in the classic soil of that ancient Hellenic city.
Mark Pattison wrote an admirable sketch of Wolf's life and work in the North British Review of June 1865, reproduced in his Essays (1889); see also J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. (1908), pp. 51-60. Wolf's Kleine Schriften were edited by G. Bernhardy (Halle, 1869). Works not included are the Prolegomena, the Letters to Heyne (Berlin, 1797), the commentary on the Leptines (Halle, 1789) and a translation of the Clouds of Aristophanes (Berlin, 1811). To these must be added the Vorlesungen on Iliad i.-iv., taken from the notes of a pupil and edited by Usteri (Bern, 1830). (D. B. M.)
WOLF, HUGO (1860-1903), German composer, was born on the 13th of March 1860 at Windischgraz in Styria. His father, who was in the leather trade, was a keen musician. From him Hugo learned the rudiments of the piano and the violin. After an unhappy school life, in which he showed little aptitude for anything but music, he went in 1875 to the Conservatoire. He appears to have learned very little there, and was dismissed in 1877 because of a practical joke in the form of a threatening letter to the director, for which he was perhaps unjustly held responsible. From the age of seventeen he had to depend upon himself for his musical training. By giving lessons on the piano and with occasional small help from his father he managed to live for several years in Vienna, but it was a life of extreme hardship and privation, for which his delicate constitution and his proud, sensitive and nervous temperament were particularly ill-suited. In 1884 he became musical critic to the Salonblatt, a Viennese society paper, and contrived by his uncompromisingly trenchant and sarcastic style to win a notoriety which was not helpful to his future prospects. His ardent discipleship of Wagner was unfortunately linked with a bitter opposition to Brahms, for whose works he always retained an ineradicable dislike. The publication at the end of 1887 of twelve of his songs seems to have definitely decided the course of his genius, for about this time he retired from the Salonblatt, and resolved to devote his whole energies to song composition. The nine years which followed practically represent his life as a composer. They were marked by periods of feverish creative activity, alternating with periods of mental and physical exhaustion, during which he was sometimes unable even to bear the sound of music. By the end of 1891 he had composed the bulk of his works, on which his fame chiefly rests, 43 Mörike Lieder, 20 Eichendorff Lieder, 51 Goethe Lieder, 44 Lieder from Geibel and Heyse's Spanisches Liederspiel, and 22 from Heyse's Italienisches Liederbuch, a second part consisting of 24 songs being added in 1896. Besides these were 13 settings of lyrics by different authors, incidental music to Ibsen's Fest auf Solhaug, a few choral and instrumental works, an opera in four acts, Der Corregidor, successfully produced at Mannheim in June 1896, and finally settings of three sonnets by Michelangelo in March 1897. In September of this year the malady which had long threatened descended upon him; he was placed in an asylum, released in the following January, only to be immured again some months later by his own wish, after an attempt to drown himself in the Traunsee. Four painful years elapsed before his death on the 22nd of February 1903. Apart from his works and the tragedy of his last years there is little in Wolf's life to distinguish it from that of other struggling and unsuccessful musicians. His touchy and difficult temperament perpetually stood in the way of worldly success. What little he obtained was due to the persevering efforts of a small band of friends, critics and singers, to make his songs known, to the support of the Vienna Wagner-Verein, and to the formation in 1895 of the Hugo-Wolf-Verein in Berlin. No doubt it was also a good thing for his reputation that the firm of Schott undertook in 1891 the publication of his songs, but the financial result after five years amounted to 85 marks 35 pfennigs (about £4, 10s.). He lived in cheap lodgings till in 1896 the generosity of his friends provided him with a house of his own, which he enjoyed for one year.
Among the song composers who have adopted the modern standpoint, according to which accepted canons of beauty and of form must yield if they interfere with a closer or more vivid realization of dramatic or emotional expression, Wolf holds a place in which he has no rival, not because of the daring originality of his methods and the remarkable idiosyncrasies of his style, but because these are the direct outcome of rare poetical insight and imaginative power. He has that gift of vision which makes the difference between genius and talent. His frequent adoption of a type of song built upon a single phrase or leit-motiv in the accompaniment has led to the misleading statement that his work represents merely the transference of Wagnerian principles to song. In reality the forms of Wolf's songs vary as widely as those of the poems which he set. No less remarkable is the immense range of style at his command. But with Wolf methods of form and style are so inseparably linked with the poetical conceptions which they embody, that they can hardly be considered apart. His place among the greatest song-writers is due to the essential truth and originality of his creations, and to the vivid intensity with which he has presented them. These results depend not merely on musical gifts that are exceptional, but also upon a critical grasp of poetry of the highest order.
