Wolf, Hugo

Hugo Wolf – Italienische Serenade for string quartet

(b. Windischgraz, 13 March 1860 – d. Vienna, 22 February 1903, )

Preface
Hugo Wolf is remembered today as one of the great song-writers – in fact one of the most sensitive of word-setters. His settings of Mörike, Goethe, Scheffel, Kerner, and Eichendorff – not to mention the many Spanish and Italian poets whose texts form the basis of the Spanisches and Italienisches Liederbuch – are among the greatest ever composed.

The Italian Serenade, originally for string quartet, was almost his only non-vocal work. Written in 1887 (very quickly – it was begun on 2 May and completed two days later) it bears some similarities to Wolf’s setting of Eichendorff’s Der Soldat (I), which had been written on 7 March. And the bare fifths that begin the Serenade were destined to reappear in his settings of Eichendorff’s Das Ständchen in September 1888. In 1892 Wolf arranged the piece for small orchestra.

The opening bare fifths mimic a rustic band checking its tuning before beginning a light-hearted scherzo. The piece is a rondo with themes that flit between the different personalities of the ensemble, especially solo violin, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet and horn. Wolf did talk of adding three more movements, but never seems to have begun them, beyond a few bars of G minor slow movement.

Phillip Brookes, 2013

Reprint of a copy from the collection Phillip Brookes, Roxas City.