Hugo Wolf's place in musical history is securely established alongside Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Richard Strauss among the great composers in a genre familiarly known as the German Lied. Not many. even among those associated professionally with music ~ unless they have read the Wolf biographies by Ernest Newman (1907) and/or Frank Walker (1951) ~are aware that he was also, briefly. a regularly employed music critic. Fewer still have read more than the odd excerpt or two of anything he wrote. even in his native Austria or in other German-speaking areas.