Vogler à la chambre de Marie-Antoinette & Ino, eine Kantate (2021–22)

No other musical figure of the late eighteenth century is as polarising as Georg Joseph Vogler, whose very name divided the musical world into bitter opponents and ardent admirers. Often called “Abbé” Vogler, he was born in Würzburg in 1749. For Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, who met him in Mannheim in 1777–78, he was a man “who imagines quite a lot and cannot do much”; for the poet and musician Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, he was “an epoch-maker in music”.

Vogler could aptly be described as a lifelong traveller. In the age of the stagecoach he covered great distances at speeds that would impress even today’s frequent flyers, from the Arctic Circle to North Africa and from the British Isles to Russia. He never really settled, driven by a missionary zeal to spread his ideas and put them into practice. He worked not only as a composer and Kapellmeister but also as a teacher, organ virtuoso, theorist, organ builder and priest – and he was adept at using the press of his day to further his goals.

The musically gifted son of a violin maker, he first studied canon and civil law at the University of Würzburg. He turned to music only after arriving in Mannheim, capital of the Electoral Palatinate (Kurpfalz) and one of the foremost musical centres in Europe, in the spring of 1771. Recognising his talent, Elector Carl Theodor granted him a scholarship for a study trip to Italy (1773–75), during which he was probably ordained. On his return he was appointed second Kapellmeister in Mannheim, under Ignaz Holzbauer. In the spirit of the Enlightenment he also devoted himself to public education: in 1776 he opened his Tonschule, Mannheim’s first music school, open to men and women regardless of religion, and published a series of theoretical works, chief among them the Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule.

Under the Wittelsbach House Union, the Palatinate was to be united with Bavaria on the death of Elector Maximilian III Joseph, with the court residing in Munich. In 1778 Carl Theodor therefore moved from Mannheim to Munich with much of his household; the court musicians were free to follow or stay. Vogler at first remained in the Palatinate but was soon on the road again. Even his later posts as court Kapellmeister in Munich (1784–86) and music director at the Swedish court (1786–99) curbed his wanderlust only briefly. He made his name with programmatic organ concerts depicting natural events and biblical stories, which often drew hundreds of listeners, and devised a system to simplify organ building (Simplifikationssystem), rebuilding many older instruments to his design. In 1807 Grand Duke Ludwig I of Hesse-Darmstadt called him to his court, where an illustrious circle of pupils gathered around him, among them Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Vogler died of a stroke in Darmstadt on the morning of 6 May 1814 and was quietly buried the next day.

Dr Rüdiger Thomsen-Fürst, musicologist, Forschungszentrum Hof | Musik | Stadt