“Gedichte von Eduard Mörike”: The Poetics of Hugo Wolf’s Songs

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DOI 10.34690/606

Author Anastasia A. Nemtsova

Affiliation Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia

Email nemtsova_anastasiya@mail.ru

ORCID

0009-0007-4259-108X

Abstract

Hugo Wolf’s vocal opus “Gedichte von Eduard Mörike” vividly represents the Austro-German song tradition of the 19th century. The collection, inspired by Biedermeier poetry, is populated with typical romantic images: abandoned lovers, wanderers, the unfortunate who live on past illusions, and the happy who still dwell on them. Encounters with the fantastic, amorous ecstasy, or the search for solace in religion... These and other similar subjects fill the Austrian composer’s creation. But is it possible, amidst this profusion of sensual experiences, to identify an overarching design, threads that bind the fifty-three songs of the collection with a single idea? Currently, there is no definitive answer to this question in musicological literature. This article proposes a new approach to studying Wolf’s cycle. The research focuses on identifying the factors that allowed the composer to fathom the meaning of the selected author’s poetic texts and capture his creative portrait in music. The analysis demonstrates how Wolf constructs an integral composition, embodying two central motifs of Mörike’s lyric poetry in music—the motif of memory and the motif of ecstatic experience—which link the diverse imagery with a common psychological narrative.

Keywords songbook, German Romantic song (Lied), poetry in music, poetic motifs, the problem of unity of a vocal cycle

For citation

Nemtsova, A. A. “ ‘Gedichte von Eduard Mörike’: the poetics of Hugo Wolf’s songs,” Muzykal’naya akademiya [Music Academy], no. 1, 2026, pp. 154–173, doi:10.34690/606. (In Russ.)

Acknowledgments

I express my gratitude to Candidate of Art Criticism, Associate Professor Roman A. Nasonov, under whose guidance this topic was developed as a part of my diploma thesis.

Published 25.11.2025

Approved 27.12.2025

Submitted 23.03.2026

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