Wolf Gruner

Born in Windischgrätz in 1860, Hugo Wolf spent most of his life in Vienna. Having suffered frequently from depression and, ultimately, syphilis-induced madness, the Austrian composer died in an asylum in 1904 and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna alongside Beethoven and Schubert, other great exponents of the German classical Lieder genre to which he had devoted most of his creative life. Besides his 300 songs, Wolf completed only one opera, Der Corregidor (1896), and a handful of orchestral and chamber works. Endlessly self-deprecating and self-critical, he went for long periods without composing anything, interspersed with years of fevered inspiration during which he wrote ceaselessly. (Schubert, who lived to just thirty-one, composed twice as many songs as well as nine symphonies, fifteen string quartets, twenty-one piano sonatas and much more.)