Italienisches Liederbuch (Wolf)

Italienisches Liederbuch (English: Italian songbook) is a collection of 46 Lieder (songs for voice and piano) by Hugo Wolf, setting poems from Paul Heyse' Italienisches Liederbuch to music. The first 22 songs (Book 1) were composed between September 1890 and December 1891, and published in 1892. The other 24 songs (Book 2) were composed between March and August 1896, and published the same year. The time lag between the two volumes was caused by Wolf's long-proposed opera, Der Corregidor (1895), which might have been inspired by his personal love triangle with his friend's wife Melanie Köchert. The 46 lyrics of the songs were taken from an anthology of Italian poems by Paul Heyse (1830–1914), translated into German and published with the title of Italienisches Liederbuch in 1860. Despite Heyse’s diverse poetic selections, Wolf preferred the rispetto, a short Italian verse usually consisting of eight lines of ten or eleven syllables each, as a result of which the songs are short.

Description
The songs are composed for voice and piano. They are usually performed alternating by a male and a female singer, as (for example) in the recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano), and Gerald Moore (accompanist). In the lyrics, the male in love tends to idealize his lover and praise her beauty, while the female shows practical ideas about love and sometimes has complaints against her lover.

The poems
The German texts and some translations are available online at The LiederNet Archive. The poems are listed below:


 * Book 1


 * Book 2