These highly-strung natures are rarely able to keep up this incessant struggle for very long; and the finest genius may have to reckon with illness and misery and even premature death.  And yet there were people like Mozart and Schumann and Weber who were happy in spite of everything, because they had been able to keep their soul’s health and the joy of creation until the end; and though their bodies were worn out with fatigue and privation, a light was kept burning which sent its rays far into the darkness of their night.  There are worse destinies; and Beethoven, though he was poor, shut up within himself, and deceived in his affections, was far from being the most unhappy of men.  In his case, he possessed nothing but himself; but he possessed himself truly, and reigned over the world that was within him; and no other empire could ever be compared with that of his vast imagination, which stretched like a great expanse of sky, where tempests raged.  Until his last day the old Prometheus in him, though fettered by a miserable body, preserved his iron force unbroken.  When dying during a storm, his last gesture was one of revolt; and in his agony he raised himself on his bed and shook his fist at the sky.  And so he fell, struck down by a single blow in the thick of the fight.

But what shall be said of those who die little by little, who outlive themselves, and watch the slow decay of their souls?

Such was the fate of Hugo Wolf, whose tragic destiny has assured him a place apart in the hell of great musicians.[183]

[Footnote 183:  A large number of works on Hugo Wolf have been published in Germany since his death.  The chief is the great biography of Herr Ernst Decsey—­Hugo Wolf (Berlin, 1903-4).  I have found this book of great service; it is a work full of knowledge and sympathy.  I have also consulted Herr Paul Mueller’s excellent little pamphlet, Hugo Wolf (Moderne essays, Berlin, 1904), and the collections of Wolf’s letters, in particular his letters to Oskar Grohe, Emil Kaufmann, and Hugo Faisst.]

* * * * *

He was born at Windischgratz in Styria, 13 March, 1860.  He was the fourth son of a currier—­a currier-musician, like old Veit Bach, the baker-musician, and Haydn’s father, the wheelwright-musician.  Philipp Wolf played the violin, the guitar, and the piano, and used to have little quintet parties at his house, in which he played the first violin, Hugo the second violin, Hugo’s brother the violoncello, an uncle the horn, and a friend the tenor violin.  The musical taste of the country was not properly German.  Wolf was a Catholic; and his taste was not formed, like that of most German musicians, by books of chorales.  Besides that, in Styria they were fond of playing the old Italian operas of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti.  Later on, Wolf used to like to think that he had a few drops of Latin blood in his veins; and all his life he had a predilection for the great French musicians.