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Hugo Wolf\u2019s reputation as the wild man of late 19th century song \u2013 \u2018der wilde Wolf\u2019 \u2013 is borne out by many incidents in his life. <\/strong>Read on to discover more about the life and times of one of classical music’s most darly colourful figures.<\/p> Wolf was thrown out of the Vienna Conservatoire at the age of 17 for telling the director that he felt his time as a music student was making him forget more than he learned. The critic Max Graf, in his memoirs of fin-de-si\u00e8cle Vienna, characterised Wolf as a hero for the next generation of music students:<\/p> \u2018Hugo Wolf belonged to us and we belonged to him. We stared at the pale man who stood in the standing-room section of the opera house just like ourselves, while Brahms<\/a><\/strong> sat in a box like God sitting on the clouds\u2019. Yet Wolf\u2019s position outside Vienna\u2019s musical establishment was not entirely by choice.<\/p> When the young composer first came to Vienna in 1875 from the small town of Windischgraz in lower Styria, Austria, he and his father were passionate that he should progress from his obscure origins to a place at the centre of Vienna\u2019s musical life. On the occasion of Richard Wagner<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s visit to the Austrian capital in 1875, Wolf followed his carriage wherever it went and stood in the lobby of the master\u2019s hotel until he was allowed to show him his songs. As Wolf said: \u2018I conceived an irresistible inclination towards Richard Wagner, without having yet formed any conception of his music\u2019; it was enough that this man had the reputation of being the greatest opera composer<\/a><\/strong> of all.<\/p> The polemics that surrounded Wagner\u2019s cause \u2013 his battles with the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick and other Brahmsians \u2013 clearly enhanced his status in Wolf\u2019s eyes. But such polemics did not prevent him from seeking an interview with Brahms too in 1879. Unfortunately Brahms did not like Wolf or his songs, and suggested the young man should go back to the drawing-board and arrange counterpoint lessons forthwith.<\/p> Hugo Wolf followed Wagner’s carriage around Vienna<\/h2>