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On September 20, 1897 Hugo Wolf was taken to Dr. Svetlins sanatorium in Vienna, and on February 22, 1903, he died there, insane, at the age of only 43. The last songs he wrote in March 1897, were the three Michelangelo Lieder. The settings of German translations by Robert-Tornow of the original poems of Michelangelo are for low voice. It goes without saying that the sculptor must sing bass, Wolf remarked. These are verses of retrospection, old age and resignation, with a streak of the pessimism of the ancients, contemplating the inevitable. The second poem, “Alles endet, was entstehet“, which was particularly close to Wolf's heart, is a fragment of a ballad a song of the dead, an inexorable utterance in the face of eternity, the cruel truth about the passing of all that is earthly. Wolf intended to use the title “Vanitas vanitatum“ for the composition, which moves along slowly and steadily, and whose tonality of C sharp minor, from which there is no escape, is only briefly i
