During the following years he wrote his next master-pieces - always in cycles and nearly always within weeks or at most months, followed by agonizing fruitless periods, often accompanied by depressions: 51 songs on verses of Eichendorff, 51 songs on verses of Goethe, 46 songs based on the "Italian Song Book" by Paul Heyse, two volumes of the "Spanish Songbook", spiritual and secular, finally the fully ripened three Michelangelo-Songs. In between choral works like "Elfenlied" (Elf Song) and "Der Feuerreiter" (The Fire Rider), based on songs - and the only two orchestral pieces "Penthesilea" and the completely non-wagnerian lightful "Italian Serenade", which originally was planned for string quartet. Slowly but continually Hugo Wolf's fame grew.

Detlev von Liliencron greeted him with an enthusiastic hymn. A progressive paralysis, the result of a luetitious illness, set an early end to his life. He had to be delivered into a Vienna asylum.