What would songs – popular or classical, country or urban – be without love?

The raptures, pains and annoyances of love are very much the subject of the Italienisches Liederbuch (Italian Song Book) by the sadly short-lived Austrian composer Hugo Wolf. On Sunday, you can hear the complete collection of art songs, which are based on Italian folk poems, in a semi-staged performance by four singers and a pianist.

It's the next project of Voces Intimae, a Dallas concert series devoted to classical art songs. The concert, at Grace United Methodist Church, will feature soprano Elizabeth Racheva, mezzo Brooke Clark Gibson, tenor Jonathan Morales, baritone Brian Ming Chu and pianist Mi Yeon Han.

Although considered one of the great composers of art songs, Wolf is more honored than performed. A performance of the complete Italienisches Liederbuch offers a rare glimpse into a particularly fertile period in Austro-German music.

"I really feel that these songs encapsulate everything Wolf had to offer," says Ms. Racheva, Voces Intimae's artistic director. "There's incredibly virtuosic writing for the piano. There are arching vocal lines. There's wit and sarcasm and heartbreak. And he does all this with an economy that is incredible."

Born in 1860, the same year as Mahler, Wolf belonged to a generation of transitional composers – others include Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schmidt and Franz Schreker – doomed to languish in Mahler's long shadow. In different ways, all represent an evolution between Wagner, with whom Wolf studied, and modernism. But while Zemlinsky and Schreker often luxuriate in quite plush chromatic harmonies, Wolf's songs, finely incised miniatures, are remarkable for clarity and unvarnished directness.

Indeed, the first line in the Italienisches Liederbuch could serve as a Wolfian motto: "Even small things can delight us."

Like Schubert, Wolf was further doomed by syphilis, which gave him barely 20 years for composition. He was only 42 when he died, after six years spent mainly in mental institutions.

Published in two volumes, in 1892 and 1896, the Italienisches Liederbuch is a collection of settings of anonymous Italian folk verses, translated into German.

"The intense human activity of an Italian village," writes Graham Johnson, "is mirrored by a parade of the tiniest and most subtle musical devices and inflections seemingly with lives of their own."

Musicologists and singers have argued whether Wolf meant the Italienisches Liederbuch to be performed in printed order. Sunday's performance will shuffle the 46 songs to create little scenes.

"The challenge was to devise some sort of logical narrative," Ms. Racheva says. "We ended up with about eight different vignettes, little scenes of anywhere from two to five songs, where we're kind of playing the same character, in one relationship."

And, as has been done in some other performances, Sunday's presentation will be semi-staged, by director John de los Santos.

"I had seen two different staged performances of it in New York," Ms. Racheva says, "and I just fell in love with the idea. I had just recently worked with John de los Santos on [Aaron Copland's opera] The Tender Land, with the Living Opera, and I was drawn to his use of the body. He's a dancer and choreographer as well."

Plan your life

At 5 p.m. Sunday at Grace United Methodist Church, 4105 Junius at Haskell. Pre-concert talk at 4:30 p.m. $20; $10 for students. 214-725-1042, www.vocesintimae.org.