The Austrian-Slovenian Hugo Wolf was born in Windischgraetz on March 13, 1860 and started music studies at the Viennese conservatory.
He was a "difficult student" because of his egoistic spoils. He became the person he was just out of his strength and powerful will. Wolf was one of the outstanding European composers, who sounded literary works of great poets such as Heinrich Heine or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
His first accepted composition "Das Mausefallenspruechlein" came out in 1882. The symphonic poem "Phentesilia" followed one year later.
From 1884 till 1887, Hugo Wolf became a music critic with many write-ups in different publications. His several unprofessional criticisms resulted in uncounted figures of enemies, mostly respected and known composers during that time.
This hindered Wolf to celebrate his own "great" compositions. Suddenly musical ideas locked. His friends tried to support him, but mostly without success. Operas like "Michelangelo" (1897) flopped.
A melancholy man who never knew how to smile, passed away in Vienna on February 22, 1903.
