h 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.

His term of apprenticeship was not marked by anything brilliant. He went
from one school to another without being kept long anywhere. And yet he
was not a worthless lad; but he was always very reserved, little caring
to be intimate with others, and passionately devoted to music. His
father naturally did not want him to take up music as a profession; and
he had the same struggles that Berlioz had. Finally he succeeded in
getting permission from his family to go to Vienna, and he entered the
Conservatoire there in 1875. But he was not any the happier for it, and
at the end of two years he was sent away for being unruly.

What was to be done? His family was ruined, for a fire had demolished
their little possessions. He felt the silent reproaches of his father
already weighing upon him--for he loved his father dearly, and
remembered the sacrifices he had made for him. He did not wish to return
to his own province; indeed he could not return--that would have been
death. It was necessary that this boy of seventeen should find some
means of earning a livelihood and be able to instruct himself at the
same time. After his expulsion from the Conservatoire he attended no
other school; he taught himself. And he taught himself wonderfully; but
at what a cost! The suffering he went through from that time until he
was thirty, the enormous amount of energy he had to expend in order to
live and cultivate the fine spirit of poetry that was within him--all
this effort and toil was, without doubt, the cause of his unhappy death.
He had a burning thirst for knowledge and a fever for work which made
him sometimes forget the necessity for eating and drinking.

He had a great admiration for Goethe, and was infatuated by Heinrich von
Kleist, whom he rather resembles both in his gifts and in his life; he
was an enthusiast about Grillparzer and Hebbel at a time when they were
but l