When we mention Wolf’s debt to Wagner, when we mention the Wagnerian influence in his songs, we do not mean that he has been an imitator. The principles which Wagner exemplified in the opera could have but a slight application to the art of song writing. Further, Wolf was far too individual to carry over Wagner’s precise methods and mannerisms into his work. When we speak of the Wagnerian influence on Wolf we mean merely the influence which a supreme master in any art must exert on all who have studied his work. Wagner had opened the eyes of men to a musical world almost undreamed of before--a world of chromatic harmony and free modulation which had been no more than vaguely implied in the music preceding him. He had shown men, by one or two masterful examples, that the thing could be done; the others then set about to do it in their own ways. Among these others was Wolf, as a young man an adorer of Wagner and constant student of his scores, a finely balanced musical nature which could understand and synthesize the work of great men and recreate out of this understanding an art that was his own. Accordingly we find Wolf far more chromatic in his procedure than any song writer before him, far more concerned with his accompaniments, freer and more accurate in his treatment of the voice--yet not a whit less lyrical than any other song writer who had ever lived. Wolf’s songs are not Wagnerian operas. His great emphasis upon the accompaniment as an instrument of expression is not an imitation of the Wagnerian orchestra with its function as ‘soul of the drama.’ His use of the germ-motive is not an imitation of the Wagnerian leit-motif, standing for a single character or idea. Wolf could not have _imitated Wagner_ without making his songs operatic and unlyrical. What he did was to write songs absolutely in the fine old German song tradition after he had fertilized his mind and invention with an accurate knowledge of the works of the greatest modern German musician. [Illustration: Hugo Wolf] _After a photograph from life._