Wohin mit der Freud (1882)

Sagt, seid Ihr es feiner Herr? from Spanisches Liederbuch (1889)

Begegnung from Mörike Lieder (1888)

Philine from Goethe Lieder (1888-9)

Written on New Year’s Eve 1882 and stylishly set in waltz time, Wohin mit der Freud is the most Viennese of Wolf’s songs. It is another celebration of the innocence of young, requited love with not a cloud in the sky. Though a comparatively youthful and not entirely characteristic example of Wolf’s art - he did not allow it to be published in his lifetime - it is hardly resistible in its easy tunefulness and its deeper, rather Schumannesque lyricism in the closing stanza.

If constancy might be expected of the lovers in that Reineck setting, it would be rash to assume any such thing in relation to the protagonists of the following songs from the Spanish Songbook and the Mörike and Goethe collections. The morning-after recriminations directed with unremitting vigour at the “feiner Herr” in question - and reflected in the primitive ostinato of quavers in the piano part - would be enough to put anyone off. On the other hand, the coquettish tune in the right hand running counter to the scolding vocal line and the still lively memory of tambourine and castanet sounds might just have the opposite effect… Begegnung is another morning-after scene. In the aftermath of a whirlwind encounter the storm is still raging both in a wonderfully vivid piano part and in the memory of the boy - but apparently not in the heart of the girl, who just disappears round the corner. The piano follows her.

As we know from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Philine is a shallow personality in comparison with the mysterious and tragic Mignon. She is the soubrette of the travelling theatre company and has neither the heart nor the intellect to be very interested in their rehearsals of Hamlet, the seriousness of which she counters by singing “a ditty with a very graceful and pleasing melody.” In a pretty and entertaining rondo, based on the gavotte introduced by the piano in the opening bars, Wolf duly and ingeniously supplies just what Goethe ordered.