Robert Browning’s ‘Abt Vogler’ – The Organist as Improviser and Divine Servant

Quinn, Iain

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-49223-0_1

Iain Quinn⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature ((PASTMULI))

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Abstract

Browning’s Abt Vogler provides for a study of the organist as an improviser and musician in communion with the Divine. With an eighteenth-century figure such as Vogler, Browning is able to draw not only on the contemporary perception of an earlier musician but also on the present re-ordering of compositional trends that was taking hold of the organ world. Moreover, the influence of contemporary aesthetical concerns can be seen in tandem with the increasingly scholarly organ world through the employment of the (superior) form of the fugue. Through Browning’s portrayal of Vogler, we witness the influences and impact on the musical creator’s art as much as Browning’s contemporary perception of the figure of the organist.

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Notes

1.
Robert Browning, Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning, ed. Myra Reynolds (1909; Project Gutenberg, 2009), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28041/28041-h/28041-h.htm#Page_247.
2.
See Iain Quinn, The Genesis and Development of an English Organ Sonata (Abingdon: Royal Musical Association Monograph Series – Routledge, 2017).
3.
R. W. S. Mendl, ‘Robert Browning, the Poet-Musician’, Music and Letters, Vol. 42 (1961): 142.
4.
Iain Finlayson, Browning: A Private Life (London: HarperCollins, 2004), 48.
5.
For a detailed account of this see Nachum Schoffman, There is No Truer Truth – The Musical Aspect of Browning’s Poetry (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 23–44.
6.
William Hall Griffin and Harry Christopher Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning (New York, 1910), 17.
7.
Finlayson, Browning, 56.
8.
Malcolm Richardson, ‘Robert Browning’s Taste in Music’, Browning Institute Studies, Vol. 6 (1978): 105.
9.
W. Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, Music & Letters, Vol. 17, No. 3, (July 1936) makes the observation that whilst the Browning Encyclopedia calls Relfe a celebrated contrapuntist, his name is not to be found in either Grove or the Dictionary of National Biography. Relfe lived in Church Row, Camberwell, not far from the Brownings and taught at home. W. H. Griffin, The Life of Robert Browning, ed. Harry Christopher Minchin (London: Methuen, 1938), 16.
10.
Ibid., 106–107.
11.
Ibid., 113.
12.
William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1935), 290.
13.
Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, 244.
14.
Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, ed. Heinrich Düntzer (Berline, n.d.), 15: 337.
15.
Edward W. Naylor, The Poets and Music (Westport: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1928), 21.
16.
Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, 111.
17.
Ibid.
18.
See Carl Czerny, Twelve Sonatas, arranged by Carl Czerny, ed. Iain Quinn (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2015).
19.
John Maynard, Browning’s Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 142.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, 106.
24.
Ibid., 107.
25.
A. Goodrich-Freer, ‘Robert Browning The Musician’, The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, Vol. 49, No. 290, (April 1901): 650.
26.
Ibid., 652.
27.
Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., The Bach Reader (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 231.
28.
John Maynard, Browning Re-Viewed (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998), 45.
29.
Ibid., 106.
30.
Ibid., 133.
31.
Ibid., 45.
32.
Ibid., 290.
33.
Edward C. McAleer, Dearest Isa (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), 87.
34.
Naylor, The Poets and Music (Westport: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1928).
35.
Watson Kirkconnell, ‘The Epilogue to Dramatis Personae’, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 41, No. 4, (April 1926): 218.
36.
Edwin Muir, ‘Robert Browning’, in Robert Browning – A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Methuen & Co Ltd., 1966), 66.
37.
Maynard, Browning Re-Viewed, 112.
38.
Mrs. Turnbull, ‘Abt Vogler’ Read at the 17th Meeting of the Browning Society, Friday, June 22, 1883. Browning Studies, ed. E. Berdoe (London: George Allen & Sons. London, 1909), 148.
39.
E. Dickinson West, ‘Browning as a Preacher’, Dark Blue, Vol. 2, No. 8, (October 1871): 171–172.
40.
Marc R. Plamondon, ‘What Do You Mean by your Mountainous Fugues? A Musical Reading of Browning’s “A Toccata on Galuppi’s” and “Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha”’, Victorian Poetry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1999): 310.
41.
Kirkconnell, ‘The Epilogue to Dramatis Personae’, 213.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Ibid., 215.
44.
Ibid., 217.
45.
Ibid., 219.
46.
DeVane, A Browning Handbook, 292.
47.
Schweiger, ‘Abt Vogler’, 161.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Margaret Grave, ‘Georg Joseph Vogler’, Oxford Music Online (accessed 10 February 2011).
50.
Plamondon, ‘What Do You Mean by Your Mountainous Fugues? A Musical Reading of Browning’s “A Toccata on Galuppi’s” and “Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha”’, 319.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Schweiger, ‘Abt Vogler’, 164.
53.
Contemporary commentator referred to in Schweiger, ‘Abt Vogler’, 164.
54.
Floyd K. Grave, ‘Abbe Vogler and the Bach Legacy’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, (Winter 1979–1990): 120.
55.
Floyd Grave, ‘Abbe Vogler’, 119.
56.
Malcolm Richardson, ‘Robert Browning’s Taste in Music’, Browning Institute Studies, Vol. 6 (1978): 112.
57.
Turnbull, ‘Abt Vogler’, 142.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Browning line 87.
60.
Brian Horne, ‘Art: A Trinitarian Imperative?’, in Trinitarian Theology Today, ed. Christoph Schwöbel (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), 8–91. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 239.
61.
Ibid., 243.
62.
Ibid., 253.
63.
Ibid., 265.
64.
Horne, ‘Art: A Trinitarian Imperative?’, 242.
65.
J. B. Metz, ‘Productive Noncentemporaneity’ in Observations on ‘The Spiritual Situation of the Age’: Contemporary German Perspectives, ed. J. Habermas (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1984), 169–177. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 221.
66.
Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 223.
67.
Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1966) 72. Stolzfus, Theology as Performance, 157.
68.
Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 223.
69.
Ibid., 217.
70.
Marian Von Glehn, ‘Browning as a Religious Teacher’, Jewish Quarterly Review (1890): 230. Goodrich-Freer, ‘Abt Vogler’, 657.
71.
Browning line 49.
72.
Browning line 82.
73.
Browning line 32.
74.
Browning lines 81–82.
75.
Browning line 4.
76.
Browning line 12.
77.
Stopford A. Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning (London: Isbister and Company Ltd., 1903), 149.
78.
Browning line 13.
79.
Browning line 19.
80.
Browning line 28.
81.
Browning line 28.
82.
Browning line 29.
83.
Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, ed. Friedrich von der Leyen (Berlin, 1938; Heidelberg, 1937), 251.
84.
Carl Dalhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 89.
85.
Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 157.
86.
Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art (New York, Collier Books, 1961). Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 158.
87.
John Cage, Silence (London: Boyars, 1978/1986 printing), 204.
88.
A. Kendall, The Tender Tyrant: Nadia Boulanger (London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1976). Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 267.
89.
Browning line 57.
90.
Browning line 57.
91.
Browning line 3.
92.
Browning line 58.
93.
Browning line 62.
94.
Browning line 76.
95.
Browning line 77.
96.
Browning line 80.
97.
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Chapel-Organist’, in The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1930).
98.
Browning line 49.
99.
Browning line 87.
100.
Karl Barth, Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 50. Stoltzfus, Theology as Performance, 137.
101.
Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning, 149.
102.
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 167.
103.
Roy E. Gridley, Browning (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan, 1972), 121.
104.
Browning line 96.
105.
Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, 204.
106.
Dalhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 90.
107.
Ibid., tr. 90.
108.
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 162.
109.
Ibid.
110.
Peter Le Huray and James Day, eds., Music and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 237.
111.
Tr. feeling/emotion.
112.
Friedrich Schleirermacher, Christian Faith, eds. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1948 [1928]) 3.0.2. Stolzfus, Theology as Performance, 92.
113.
Goethe, ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’ (1829), Trans. Le Huray and Day, eds., in Music and Aesthetics, 420.
114.
Browning line 19.
115.
Browning line 22. Browning had witnessed the illumination of St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome at Easter 1854.
116.
Naylor, The Poets and Music, 11.
117.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 65.
118.
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 158.
119.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 84.
120.
Browning line 57.
121.
Browning line 66.
122.
E. T. A Hoffman, Schriften zur Musik, ed. Friedrich Schnapp (Munich, 1963), 34.
123.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 6.
124.
Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, 34.
125.
Referred to in Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 158.
126.
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 55.
127.
Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Instruments, 191.
128.
Browning lines 43–44.
129.
Browning lines 45–46.
130.
Browning line 47.
131.
Browning line 49.
132.
Browning line 51.
133.
Robert Langbaum, ‘The Dramatic Element: Truth as Perspective’, in Robert Browning – A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Methuen & Co Ltd., 1966,) 136.
134.
Dalhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 93.
135.
Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, 292.
136.
Hoffman, Schriften zur Musik, 36.
137.
Hoffman, Schriften zur Musik, 215.
138.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 46.
139.
Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, ed. Heinrich Düntzer (Berline, n.d.), 18:604.
140.
Ibid.
141.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), Vol. II, 888–910. Contemplating Music (Stuyvesant: Pendragon Press, 1987), 340.
142.
Hegel, Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Art, 341.
143.
Weisse, System der Aesthetik als Wissenschaft von der Idee der Schönheit System der Ästhetik, 55.
144.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 101.
145.
Ernst Kurth, Bruckner (Berlin: Max Hesses Verlag, 1925), 1: 258.
146.
William Lyon Phelps, ‘Browning, Schopenhauer, and Music’, The North American Review, Vol. 206, No. 743 (October 1917): 623.
147.
Ibid.
148.
Richardson, ‘Robert Browning’s Taste in Music’, 114.
149.
Norbert Miller, ‘Musik als Sprache’, in Beiträge zur musikalischen Hermeneutik, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg: Studien zue Musik geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 43 1975), 271.
150.
Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, 247.
151.
Referred to in Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 232.
152.
See Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, Trans. Gustav Cohen (Indianapolis: The Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1957).
153.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 86.
154.
Ibid.
155.
Ibid.
156.
Ibid.
157.
Phelps, ‘Browning, Schopenhauer, and Music’, 40.
158.
Sailer, Sämmtliche Werke, 14: 161f.
159.
Albert S. Cook, ‘Abt Vogler’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philogy, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1905): 485–491.
160.
Cook, ‘Abt Vogler’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philogy, 486.
161.
Alan Bishop and John Ferns, ‘Art in Obedience to Laws: Form and meaning in Browning’s “Abt Vogler”’, Victorian Poetry, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1974): 32.
162.
C. Willard Smith referred to in Bishop and Ferns, ‘Art in Obedience to Laws’, 26.
163.
Referred to in Bishop and Ferns, ‘Art in Obedience to Laws’, 27.
164.
See Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Allgemeine Geschicte der Musik (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1967), 24.
165.
Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 63.
166.
Christopher Hogwood, Handel (London: Thames and Hudson, c. 1984), 276. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, 238.
167.
Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Fragment über Musik un Sprache’, in Quasi una Fantasia (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963), 11. Referred to in Dahlhaus, 115.
168.
Goodrich-Freer, ‘Robert Browning the Musician’, 649.
169.
Gustav Mahler, Briefe, ed. Alma Mahler (Berlin: Zsolnay, 1924), 185.
170.
Adorno, referred to in Dahlhaus, 116.
171.
Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, 221.
172.
Referred to in Wright Roberts, ‘Music in Browning’, 237.
173.
Browning line 92.
174.
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. II. (Sunnyside, Orpington: George Allen, 1886).

Bibliography

Maynard, John. Browning Re-Viewed (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998).
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Appendices

Hertha Schweiger, ‘Abt Vogler’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1939): 162.

Appendix I: A Musical Misunderstanding?

Many writers have anguished over Abt Vogler’s lines ‘Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,-yes, And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground…’^{Footnote 173} The question that must be answered is whether, in the context of a dramatic monologue, these should be considered Browning’s words or those of his speaker and if the latter then whether his adoption of a language inconsistent with accepted musical discourse is simply there to stimulate the imagination of the musically untrained. That noted, an explanation is possible.

Firstly, one plays a C major (‘common’) chord, octave Cs in the left hand, and a first inversion of the chord in the right hand. The lower (alto) voice of the right hand is then lowered from E to E flat (‘sliding by semitone…sink[ing] to the minor’). Indeed, this is no subtle modulation, but surely the use of ‘sinking’ alludes simply to a descent. From there the organist ‘blunts it into a ninth’ (‘sliding’ from E flat to D). The ‘blunting’ becomes a musical effect exactly as a musical juror would see it – a rough handling of the material, and out of place in a piece already given to the higher calling the text suggests. It is not finessed or even resolved, but rather ‘blunt[ed]’. Far from being an error – albeit curiously described – this portrayal of the fallible organist aligns well with Ruskin: ‘to banish imperfection is to destroy expression’.^{Footnote 174}

Appendix II: Orchestrion

Hertha Schweiger, ‘Abt Vogler’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1939): 162.

1^st Manual		Pedal
1. Rossignol-Cimbalino	1½’, 11/5’, 1¾’
2. Campanella	2’
3. Jeu d’acier	22/5’
4. Tromba marina	6’ · 4 (sic)	Tromba marina	6’, 4
5. Tromba trias harmonica	2’, 11/3’, 14/5’, c’
2^nd Manual
1. Flute piccolo	1½’, F–Ombra 4’, c	1. Fl. rustico	1½’
2. Flute à bec	3’	2. Fl. Dolce	3’
3. Flute à chein	6’	3. Sylvana	6’
4. Flautone	12’	4. Basse de fl.	12’
3^rd Manual		Pedal
1. Vox angelica	3’, F – Fluttante 35/9’, d.	1. Cornette	3’
2. Clarinett	6’, F – Vox humana 4’, c	2. Clairon	6’
3. Fagotto ed Oboe	12’	3. Serpent	12’
4^th Manual
1. Violini	3’ F – Fl. trav. 17/9’, d.	1. Viola d.g.	6’
2. Viole d’amour	6’, F – Fl. d’amore 11/3’, g.

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Quinn, I. (2017). Robert Browning’s ‘Abt Vogler’ – The Organist as Improviser and Divine Servant. In: The Organist in Victorian Literature. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49223-0_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49223-0_1
Published: 30 December 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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