Georg Joseph Vogler

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Georg Joseph Vogler (oil painting by Joseph Hauber, 1808)

Georg Joseph Vogler , also Abbé Vogler or Abbot Vogler (born June 15, 1749 in Würzburg ; † May 6, 1814 in Darmstadt ) was a German composer , organist , bandmaster , priest , music teacher and music theorist .

Life

Vogler was born in Würzburg (in the Innerer Graben house No. 9), attended the Jesuit school in his hometown and studied canon law and theology in Bamberg . At the age of 22 he took the position of chaplain at the court of Elector Karl Theodor of the Palatinate in Mannheim . Supported by this, he continued his studies of music with Francesco Antonio Vallotti and others in Italy . In 1775 he was ordained a priest in Rome and was specially honored by the Pope. He then returned to Mannheim as Kapellmeister , where he arranged, among other things, Handel's oratorio Messiah and performed it in 1777/1778. According to Samuel Baur (1768–1832) he was one of the students of the Jesuit and music director Alexander Keck (1724–1804) in Mannheim .

Commemorative plaque on the site of the home of Wolfgang Carl Briegel , Georg Joseph Vogler and Giacomo Meyerbeer in Darmstadt, Karolinenplatz

In the following years Vogler stayed in Paris, where he was responsible for the performance of operas. In 1784 he returned to Mannheim as Kapellmeister, although Elector Karl Theodor and his court had meanwhile moved to Munich. In 1786 he took the position of court conductor ("Hovkapellmästare") and court composer at the Swedish court in Stockholm under King Gustav III. and also taught music to the heir to the throne; an activity that he carried out with interruptions until 1799. The contract granted him six months of vacation, which he regularly used to travel through Europe, which extended to Africa and Greece. This was followed by a two-year stay in Prague and a four-year stay in Vienna. It was not until 1807 that Vogler took up a permanent position again, this time as court conductor in Darmstadt, where he was awarded the Ludewigs Order of the First Class (see the illustration with cross and breast star). He invested his fortune almost entirely in modernizing organs, which he had carried out all over Europe at his own expense. Before he died in Darmstadt in 1814, he ran into financial difficulties because the costs for the new orchestrion commissioned in Munich were too high. From 1806 he was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

There is a biography of Abbot Georg Joseph Vogler. Augsburg 1888 , which was written by Karl Emil von Schafhäutl and still offers a very good overview of Vogler's life and work.

Act

His compositional work is extensive. It mainly includes symphonies , operas , singspiels , ballets , masses , psalms , requies , Te Deums , cantatas , motets , organ works and stage music , including Shakespeare's Hamlet . Organ works are at the center of his compositions ; here his 150 or so preludes deserve special mention.

As a music teacher, he made a name for himself primarily by founding several music schools . His best-known students are Franz Danzi , Bernhard Anselm Weber , Carl Maria von Weber , Giacomo Meyerbeer and Johann Gänsbacher . Vogler can be attributed to the Mannheim School , whose style he clearly outlined in his magazine Considerations of the Mannheim Tonschule (Mannheim 1778–1781).

He achieved his importance as a music theorist primarily through the use of digits to describe harmony levels, which were later adopted by Gottfried Weber and Simon Sechter and which formed the starting point of the level theory . In 1776 he published the tone circle named after him .

Vogler influenced organ building in the 19th century: starting with the “Mannheim School” and the Viennese Classic , his “simplification system” led him away from the factory organ of the Baroque era. He divided the manuals into pure color values, used the aliquots for the acoustic generation of combination tones and placed the whole organ in a swell box . Over thirty organs in Europe were rebuilt at his expense. From 1790 he favored the use of reeds with penetrating tongues in some registers. He called his portable organ the Orchestrion .

An organochordion was built by the organ builder Rackwitz, who worked for Vogler for eight years. There was also the Micropan, which was built by the organ builders Knecht and Hagemann in Tübingen for Vogler between 1802 and 1808. In 1809 he received an award for the triorganon.

Vogler's work and activity were not without controversy during his lifetime. After a polemical review of Vogler's Kurpfälzischer Tonschule , many years of personal defamation flared up from mainly north German music theorists, above all Johann Nikolaus Forkel . Also the judgment of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a letter from 1777 about him, that he was an "eder [dreary] musical joker. a person who imagines a lot and can't do a lot ”, contributed to Vogler's long-dominated negative image.

Works (selection)

Compositions

  • 6 piano trios op.1
  • 6 easy violin sonatas op.3
  • 6 piano concertos op.5
  • 6 sonatas for piano and violin, cello ad libitum op.6
  • 12 divertissements for piano op.7
  • 4 string quartets (in F, A-flat, F, E-flat)
  • 6 quartets for flute, violin, viola and cello in (Bb, Eb, F, D, A, C)
  • Concerto Corno di caccia in F (1800)
  • 4 Requiem in c, d, Es, e (around 1770)
  • Requiem with Libera me in G minor (1776)
  • Funeral music on Louis XVI. for orchestra (1793)
  • Castore e Polluce
  • Athalia (oratorio)
  • Ballet music to a comical ballet
  • Incidental music to Shakespeare's Hamlet
  • Amore prigioniero for solo voice, choir and orchestra

Fonts (selection)

  • Sound science and composition art . Mannheim 1776.
  • Voice training art . Mannheim 1776.
  • Electoral Palatinate Tonschule . Mannheim 1778.
  • Examples of reasons for the Kurpfälzische Tonschule . Mannheim 1778.
  • Inledning til Harmoniens Kännedom . Stockholm 1794 ( digitized ).
  • Organist-Schola . Stockholm 1798 ( digitized ).
  • Systhême de simplification pour les orgues par l'abbé Vogler . 1798.
  • Clavér-Schola . Stockholm 1798 ( digitized ).
  • Handbook for harmony and the figured bass . Prague 1802.
  • The Scala or personalized vocal training and singing art, text and dissection . 1810.
  • System for the construction of joints as an introduction to the harmonic singing connection theory . Written in 1811; André, Offenbach undated [around 1817] ( digitized version ).

literature

  • Franz Joseph Fröhlich : Abbatis Vogler missa pro defunctis (review), in: Caecilia 1 (1824), issue 1 and 2; Digital copies: Part 1 , Part 2
  • Franz Joseph Fröhlich: Biography of the great music artist Abbot Georg Joseph Vogler . Wuerzburg 1845.
  • Robert Eitner :  Vogler, Georg Joseph . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 169-177.
  • Robert Browning : Abbot Vogler . Poem, 1864 ( E-Text )
  • Robert Gervasi: The church music Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler . Mannheim 2013 (including dissertation, State University for Music and Performing Arts Mannheim)
  • Karl Emil von Schafhäutl : Abbot Georg Joseph Vogler. His life, character and musical system. His works, his school, portraits etc. Augsburg 1888; Reprint Hildesheim 1979.
  • Hertha Schweiger: Abbé GJ Vogler's organ theory. A contribution to the sound history of the early romantic organ . Kmoch, Vienna 1938 (also dissertation, University of Freiburg im Breisgau 1934)
  • Christina Wagner: Abbé Vogler in Darmstadt. Last stop on the life journey of a clergyman, a musician, a teacher and researcher . Supplement to the Darmstadt 1999 exhibition. Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Darmstadt 1999, ISBN 3-933112-08-7
  • Thomas Betzwieser, Silke Leopold (ed.): Abbé Vogler - a Mannheimer in a European context . International Colloquium Heidelberg 1999. (= Sources and studies on the history of the Mannheim court orchestra; Vol. 7). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2003, ISBN 3-631-50095-5
  • Rüdiger Thomsen-Fürst:  Vogler, Georg Joseph. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 17 (Vina - Zykan). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-7618-1137-5 , Sp. 176-183 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)

Web links

Wikisource: Georg Joseph Vogler - List of publications and digital copies  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Georg Joseph Vogler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bruno Rottenbach: Würzburg street names. Volume 1, Franconian Society Printing Office, Würzburg 1967, p. 12 ( Innerer Graben ).
  2. ↑ Samuel Baur : General historical-biographical-literary concise dictionary of all strange people who died in the first decade of the nineteenth century . 1st volume. Ulm 1816, Sp. 714 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  3. ^ Abbot Vogler: Data on acoustics. In: Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung III (1800/01), No. 21, April 20, 1801, Col. 517-525 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  4. ↑ Floyd Kersey Grave, Margaret G. Grave: In praise of harmony: the teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. a. 1988, ISBN 0-8032-2128-2 ( limited preview in the Google book search; describes in great detail everything in connection with the Orchestrion, and over 30 organ modifications).
  5. ↑ Margaret Grave:  Vogler, Georg Joseph. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
personal data
SURNAME Vogler, Georg Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vogler, Abbé; Vogler, Dept.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, organist, priest, music teacher and music theorist
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1749
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1814
Place of death Darmstadt