Vogler,

Vogler, GEORG JOSEPH, composer, usually styled the Abbé (Browning's Abt) Vogler, was born at Würzburg, June 15, 1749, the son of a violin-maker. A musician from his cradle, he studied at Bamberg, Mannheim, Bologna, and Padua, was ordained priest at Rome in 1773, and made Knight of the Golden Spur, and protonotary and chamberlain to the pope. Returning to Mannheim, he established there his first school of music; his second was that at Stockholm, where in 1786 he had been appointed Kapellmeister. After years of wandering and brilliant successes as a player on his 'orchestrian' at London and half over Europe, he settled as honoured Kapellmeister at Darmstadt, and opened his third school, the chief pupils of which were Gänzbacher, Weber, and Meyerbeer. Here Vogler died, May 6, 1814. His compositions are now forgotten, still more so his new theories of music, and indeed many, with Mozart, count him but a charlatan. His name best survives in Robert Browning's poem in the Dramatis Personæ (1864), a splendid imaginative expression of the function of the art of music. See the study by Schafhäutl (Augsb. 1887).