Ernest Newman points out as Wolfs highest glory the immense variety and distinctness of the characters he has interpreted in his songs. Heroes, lovers, fools, warriors, drunkards--these and a host of others he has put into his music with almost unvarying success. Newman compares him in this respect with Shakespeare. Certainly, many of the greatest masters have shown marked limitations in this respect. Wolf’s interpretative ability seems almost unlimited. He felt his poems as few other composers have done. He worked much as Schubert worked--in a sort of trance, dreaming over his poems, living and sleeping with his characters, composing his music in a kind of hypnotic state and writing down his music with such inspired insight that the first draft was nearly always the last. As a result we feel that his interpretation is the ultimate and perfect interpretation. He seems to have had no technique, in the sense of a musical system which dictates notes of itself. Wolf’s notes were dictated by direct inspiration as with few other song-writers in musical history. The songs are as individual as the songs of Franz and far more dissimilar in the external plan and contour. There is such a thing as a Franz style. There is no such thing as a Wolf style; each song stands utterly by itself. The numerous songs written by Wolf before 1888 are not to be counted in this general summary of his work. They are experimental and youthful, showing a progress toward the masterful maturity of his great period. But they comprise several which can rank with his best. Of these we may mention ‘The Mouse Trap,’ an exquisitely humorous thing, and ‘To Rest,’ which is very tender and moving. ‘Biterolf,’ composed in 1886, is a warrior’s song, striking the great vein of heroism. The ‘Serenade’ of 1888 is one of the best known of the Wolf songs, a piece in which the piano and voice sing together as if they were parts of one complex instrument. The fifty-three Möricke songs of the year 1888 include such a number of masterpieces that it may well be called the most remarkable single group of songs ever written. The variety and perfection of these songs would lead one to believe that they were the selected work of many years of labor. We cannot sufficiently praise the variety of expression--the human types of _Das verlassene Mägdlein_, _Agnes_, _Der Jäger_, _Erstes Liebeslied_, and the _Lied eines Verliebten_; the religious emotion of _Auf ein altes Bild_, _Schlafendes Jesuskind_, _Zum neuen Jahr_, and the _Gebet_; the poetry and fantasy of the _Elfenlied_, _Um Mitternacht_, _Nixe Binsefuss_, and others; the deep and varied emotion of _Der Genesene_ and _Die Hoffnung_, _Er ist’s_, _Nimmersatte Liebe_, _An eine Aeolsharfe_, _Verborgenheit_, _Lebewohl_, and the _Gesang Weylas_, the lively humor of _Der Tambour_, _Auftrag_, and _Abschied_. Humor is also present in the group of thirteen Eichendorf songs, as in the delightful _Der Scholar_. The passionate