The Research Of The Harmony Technique In Hugo Wolf's Piano Accompaniment For Art Songs

The peak of Hugo Wolf's artistic career lies in his achievement in the history of art songs so that some critics position him above any other composers of art songs. He kept on creating art songs from 1884 to 1897 and nothing interrupted his creation during the period, thus the acquisition of the title of composer. The year 1888 witnessed the phase of maturity in his creation, when he completed four monster cycle forms, respectively music for the poetry collections of Edward Murike's, J.W.V. Goethe's and Joseph Eichendorff's, and also for the Spanish Liederbuch. The world heard 168 pieces of musical works from him in the year 1891. In the same year he started composing the 22 tracks for the Italienische Liederbuch,nach Paul Heyse.All his art songs can be found in his musical collection, with his inscription on the cover meaning"for the sake of solo and piano", whereas on other musical works of the same nature we usually see the words"Piano Accompaniment". This view point of his concerning art songs manifests his attention on the unusual significance of the piano accompaniment.The piano accompaniments by Hugo Wolf for art songs extend over a wide scope. Simple harmony methods are indeed employed, but the overwhelming majorities are to different degrees musical pieces of innovation in terms of harmony language and methods. One of the important characteristics is the extensive use of the chromatic harmony. What truly shows the composer's important position and superb level in the transitional period along the history of harmony art development go as follows: his skills of expanding the harmony and strengthening the tension of the harmony, giving free play to his own"leading motivation"to reinforce the flow of music, the free transposition and the use of discord and modulation and so on.The paper consists of five parts. A brief preface goes before the first part which provides a brief biography of Hugo Wolf including the forming and development of his peculiar style. The second part introduces a few key elements in the art songs of Hugo Wolf's, such as the background of creation, lyrics, melody and piano accompaniment etc.. The third part is the main body of the paper, which analyzes the section of harmony in Hugo Wolf's art songs. Since each art song is a different one due to Hugo's employment of a variety of harmony techniques, the paper will mainly aim at analyzing...