Wolf, Hugo.

to Dr Heinrich Potpeschnigg,  enthusiastically reporting the fluent outpouring of the Italienisches Liederbuch, and the slow and laborious preparations and revisions for his opera Der Corregidor during the build-up to the premiere in Mannheim, including the composition and orchestration of the work, the copying of the scores and parts by Potpeschnigg’s copyist Maresch, sending him frequent corrections in musical notation, reporting his difficulties with the singers and conductor at Mannheim and alerting him to many corrections to the opera during the exhaustive revision after the premiere, illustrated with many musical quotations



Elsewhere, Wolf charts his physical decline and depression, especially the frequent and repeated inflammations of his throat, reports important concerts, discusses singers, including Frieda Zerny (with whom he was infatuated), expresses his hopes and disappointments over proposed concerts, Lilli Lehmann, the conductors Loewe, Muck, Richter, Franz Schalk and Joseph Fuchs, asks Potpeschnigg to send scores to Richard Strauss and expresses his opinions of Hanslick, the tenor Ferdinand Jäger and Bruckner, including the prophetic remark: "...Die Leute haben heute keine Ahnung von der Bedeutung dessen, dem sie morgen das letzte Geleite gaben...”



108 items in all, some with autograph envelopes, c.63 on correspondence cards with autograph address panels, including one visiting card inscribed by Wolf, green cloth box, manuscript label, Perchtoldsdorf, Döbling (Vienna), Traunkirchen, Berlin, Schloss Matzen (Tyrol), Stuttgart, Mannheim and Vienna, 7 May 1890-30 December 1896 (mainly 1894 and 1896), good condition generally, occasional slight splitting at folds,

This is a highly important source of information about Wolf, and a celebrated correspondence. 

Dr Heinrich Potpeschnigg was by profession a dentist in Graz, but whose great love was music and Wolf's Lieder in particular. He was a fine amateur pianist. He supported Wolf with preparing the parts of Der Corregidor and other works, and found him a cheap copyist in Graz, Herr Maresch.  Corresponding with a copyist in Graz (through Potpeschnigg) made work on the opera very laborious and prone to errors. Wolf endlessly asks for corrections and improvements to the scores and parts, highlighting wrong notes and dynamics by transcribing the alterations in his letters.  This work intensified after the premiere when Potpeschnigg helped him with cutting and revising both the score and parts in the light of performance.  Many of Wolf’s letters in the autumn of 1896 are largely given over to extensive lists of corrections, illustrated with quotations, both to the opera and occasionally to Maresch’s copies of the Italienisches Liederbuch.

Wolf’s letters reveal much about how the scores, parts and edition of the opera were all being produced before the premiere. Potpeschnigg’s copyist wrote out the parts and vocal score, not just for the composer, but also for the Mannheim publisher, Heckel.  Evidently the engravers, C.G. Röder of Leipzig, were already clamouring for the fourth and last act in February, four months before the premiere. Wolf was worried about the parts that Maresch had copied, and with good reason, because the conductor Hugo Röhr soon found many discrepancies. Wolf comments on deficiencies in the published vocal score, which he received on 6 May 1896, much of which of course was engraved long before the premiere (given at Mannheim on  7 June), or even the rehearsals.  Later the letters offer a wealth of information about Wolf’s revisions after the premiere.  There is also much discussion about lithographic reproduction and how a score might be prepared by photostatic reproduction (“Lichtpauseverfahren”)

Wolf gives a depressing account of the traumatic rehearsals for Der Corregidor.  The singers found the difficulties of the music well-nigh insurmountable, and were apparently very resistant to the composer’s entreaties. Wolf disagreed with Röhr’s tempos, even threatening to withdraw the opera at one point, and declined to have anything to do with the stage production.  He expresses his desire to leave Mannheim before the premiere, advising Potpeschnigg not even to bother to attend himself and suggesting that he wait until the opera can be given in Vienna. After returning to Vienna, Wolf reports that he is too depressed to make the necessary revisions to the score.

...Der Verkehr mit dem Capellmeister [Röhr] sowohl als dem Sängerpersonal gestaltet sehr schwierig. Die Leute lassen sich gar nichts sagen; der geringste Einwand wird gleich als Arroganz ausgelegt, so daß ich beschlossen habe, von aller Beschäftigung im Theater mich fern zu halten...die Partie der Frasquita den Händen einer Anfängerin anvertraut wurde. Frl. Hochleitner (Frasquita) kann ihre Partie aber noch so wenig, daß die Aufführung neuerdings auf 7. Juni verschoben werden musste. So lange aber will ich hier nicht warten...Leider kann ich...nicht dirigieren, sonst ginge die Sache gewiss anders. An dem Capellmeister wird die ganze Sache scheitern...

The letters begin in May 1890. On 12 April, there had been a concert of Wolf’s songs at the Richard Wagner-Verein in Graz, with Dr Potpeschnigg accompanying at the piano. His enthusiasm for the music was so great that he began a correspondence with the composer that lasted for several years, until Wolf entered an asylum in Vienna in 1898. Wolf’s first letter to Potpeschnigg dates from 7 May 1890, when he responds to this enthusiastic approach, addressing Potpeschnigg as “Wertester Herr Doktor”.  Thereafter Wolf became increasingly dependent on his Graz patron (who, by 1894, became, invariably, “Lieber Enrico!”). We can follow Wolf’s composition of the second volume of the Italienisches Liederbuch, an extraordinary burst of creativity in late March and April 1896, since he regularly and enthusiastically reports their composition, including having to write out from memory two songs that he had just rejected as being too weak and burnt in the oven. Other works that Wolf discusses in these letters include ‘Dem Vaterland’, ‘Elfenlied’ (Shakespeare), and ‘Der Feuerreiter’ (Mörike), his orchestrations of “Geh, Geliebter, geh jetzt” (from the Spanisches Liederbuch), and ‘Der Rattenfänger’, his latest (almost his last) songs ‘Morgenstimmung’, and three of the Heine, Shakespeare & Byron settings. Finally, Wolf describes his intention of composing a series of Michelangelo settings (of which he completed only three) and the opera Manuel Venegas.

...Ich habe bereits zwei neue “Italienische” für den 2. Bande geschrieben, die Dein Entzücken sein werden [27 March 1896]…Vorgestern habe ich das 12. der neuen Italienischen geschrieben.  Leider hat gestern u. heute meine gute Stimmung etwas nachgelassen, so daß ich mich veranlasst sah, zwei weitere Lieder stante pede in den Ofen zu praktizieren, weil sie mir zu schwächlich schienen. Die vorhandeden 12--alles prima Ware--werde ich vorerst fixieren und Dir dann behufs Copierens zusenden [15 April] ...Die zwei irrthümliche Weise, für verunglückt gehaltenen Lieder, sind aus ihrer Asche als glänzende Phönixe hervorgegangen. Glücklicherweise habe ich sie im Gedächtniß behalten… Ich habe just in diesem Augenblick das 15. beendet...” [‘Was soll der Zorn, mein Schatz’] [20 April]...Habe soeben das 20. der Italienischen aufgeschrieben. Jeztz aber muss es 24 werden [25 April]…Du wirst wahre Wunderdinge an diesem 2. Bande erleben.  Wie schade, daß ich sie Dir nicht selber vorspielen kann...Heute wurde das letzte geschrieben [‘Was für ein Lied soll dir gesungen werden?’, printed first] [30 April]...

In 1894, Wolf went to Berlin, from where he described the important and very successful concert of the choral versions of ‘Elfenlied’ (Shakespeare), and ‘Der Feuerreiter’ (Mörike), given by Siegfried Ochs in Berlin on 8 January 1894.  He reports on other performances he attended, including his incidental music Des Fest auf Solhaug (Ibsen). Wolf also describes a much less enjoyable evening at the Singakademie in Vienna in December 1893, when the celebrated pianist and conductor Ferdinand Loewe failed to turn up and he had to play the accompaniments himself, making mistakes in a piece he had largely forgotten and embarrassing the poor soprano

 “...Löwe, der als Begleiter meiner Lieder engagiert war u. für den Abend zugesagt hatte, erschien einfach nicht, sagte auch [n]icht vorher ab, gab auch keinen Grund für sein plötzlich Ausbleiben an, kurz Löwe, der begleiten sollte, war nicht da. So musste ich meinen Sitz verlasen u. im Strassenanzug mit schmutzigen Stiefeln die Begleitung übernehmen. Notabene fehlten zu Weylas Gesang [‘Gesang Weylas’ from the Mörike songbook, 1888] die Noten u. ich musste das Stück, das mir nicht mehr ganz erinnerlich war, auswendig begleiten, wobei mir richtig das Mallheur passierte, einen falschen Übergang zu greifen u. die Sängerin dadurch etwas confus zu machen...Leschki war fürchterlich befangen, irrte sich im Text u. manchmal auch in den Noten,--kurz, sie befriedigte mich nur wenig...”

Wolf’s ill health is a constant theme in the later letters, especially when the laborious work on revisions to Der Corregidor seems to have made him depressed (“...wo in dem Trubel, der mich jetzt umgiebt, die Musse finden, dieselbe genau durchzusehn u. eventuell auch Änderungen anzubringen?...”). The recurrent throat inflammations are now generally attributed to the effects of the syphilis that was later to kill him (“…leide ich seit 4 Tagen an einem schreckliche Rachencatarrh verbunden mit Schnupfen u. zeitweiligem Kopfschmerz …”). He seems to have avoided much contact with musical society in Vienna and declined an invitation to the unveiling of a monument in honour of Mozart in 1896 (“…die Anwesenheit so vieler Musiktrotteln schreckt mich ab. Ich werde der Feier nicht beiwohnen…”). He was unable to gain admittance to Bruckner’s funeral at the Karlskirche, because he could not prove he was a member of the Singverein (“…ist das nicht heiter?”).  While there is no mention of his constant but secret love for Melanie Köchert, he lauds the merits of the opera singer Frieda Zerny, with whom he was then infatuated, recommending her for a proposed Wolf-Abend in Graz (“…Dieselbe, eine junge u. schöne Erscheinung, hochgebildet u. unheimlich musikalisch veranlangt, im Besitze eines volltönenden herrlichen Mezzosoprans, lernte ich auf meiner jüngsten tourné in Darmstadt kennen und—lieben…”)

These letters appear, with modernized spellings, in Hugo Wolf. Briefe an Heinrich Potpeschnigg, edited by Heinz Nonweiller (Stuttgart 1923)