bayerische kammerphilharmonie
Reinhard Goebel, conductor
Vogel’s most successful work was the oper “Démophon”,
based on a libretto by Metastasio. Unfortunately, the
composer never experienced the success of his work.
Born in 1756 in Nuremberg (the same year as W.A.
Mozart), Vogel died in 1788 in Paris, at only age 32.
Christoph Willibald Gluck, the idol of his younger
days, wrote to him after the premiere of his opera La
toison d’or in 1786. “Your dramatic talent also enables
your other qualities to appear in the bright light of
day, and I thus congratulate you from the bottom of my
heart. This talent is all the more seldom because it was
not gained through experience but because it is a gift of
nature.”
Vogel’s “Three Symphonies for Large Orchestra”
prove him to be a superior master of the French style.
These works are heard on recording here for the first
time.
Reinhard Goebel, a musical pioneer who is intimately
familiar with historical performance practice,
has contributed to filling out our picture of the musical
scene during W.A. Mozart’s time with this essential
mosaic piece. Conducting the young musicians of
the bayerische kammerphilharmonie, Goebel creates
a highly virtuosic team that is capable of any musical
adventure.
J. Chr. Vogel – Three Symphonies
There are now two operas with arias
that I could write, one in two acts and
the other in three… the one in three is
Demofont by Metastasio, in translation,
and mixed with choruses and dances
and generally arranged for the French
theater…”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote
these words to his father from Paris on
July 3, 1778. Démophon did end up being
composed, though not by Mozart, but
by Luigi Cherubini in 1788. However,
much more successful than Cherubini’s
version was that by Johann Christoph
Vogel, likewise written in 1788. Vogel
presumably arrived in Paris at the same
time as Mozart was leaving the French
capital head over heels after an argument
with Baron Grimm in September
1778.
Johann Christoph Vogel was born
in 1756 in Nuremberg, the offspring of
a violin- and lute-building dynasty that
can be traced back to the early 16th
century. He studied composition in
Regensburg with Josef Riepel (1709 –
1782), who had obtained his training
from 1739 to 1745 in Dresden and
experienced
the great era of Zelenka,
Pisendel and Hasse but could find no
employment in the court orchestra
there. Despite this, Riepel became an
apologist for the Dresden school and
wrote volumes of theoretical material
that are still awaiting rediscovery. In
Paris, Vogel played horn in various
princely chapels – soon becoming
known as a composer of sinfonia concertantes
and oratorios. He wrote his
first opera, La toison d’or, in 1786.
Vogel had dedicated the printed edition
of the work to his idol Christoph
Willibald Gluck, who thanked him in a
letter dated August 3, 1787. This letter,
by the way, is the last known document
in Gluck’s own hand. It was even promoted
in the “Journal de Paris” as if it
were of public interest!
The letter read: “Esteemed Sir:
Salieri
has given me a copy of your first
opera La toison d’or, which you
dedicated to me. My eyes hardly allow me
to read any longer, but Salieri gave me
the pleasure of playing this music,
which is so worthy of the praise given
to you by Paris, on the harpsichord.
Your dramatic talent also enables your
other qualities to appear in the bright
light of day, and I thus congratulate you
from the bottom of my heart. This talent
is all the more seldom because it
was not gained through experience but
because it is a gift of nature. Mr. Salieri
has also reported to me all the praise
he has heard about your second work.
God grant that it will contribute as
much to your fame as I myself wish
you, and that you will become a most
famous composer. Please be assured of
all my sentiments: Yours, Gluck”
To understand this letter, one must
know that music – especially opera in
pre-revolutionary France – was used to
discuss subjects that could not actually
be debated in the appropriate social
settings. After the constantly critical
Parisian dandies had driven Gluck out,
or more accurately, browbeaten him
out – after all, his nationality and language
were the same as the beheaded
Marie Antionette – they invited
Johann Christian Bach to Paris. His
Amadis de Gaule, however, did not end
up finding favor with all. Sacchini and
Piccinni were next. Basically, all of
these were consummate composers –
as Mozart in 1778 – but they didn’t
know what they had to argue for or
what they were supposed to stand up
for. This was an old game of the Parisians,
who had already shot down
Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-
Marie Leclair – two real geniuses – on
their own playing field and had constantly
maltreated Rameau. In the final
analysis, it was a fight over the priority
of Italian or French musical taste:
“Un roi, un loi, une foi” (one king, one
law, one faith) – and if that’s the case,
shouldn’t there only be one type of
music too?
The premiere of La toison d’or
(1786) had been preceded by
performances of compositions by Vogel in the
“Concert Spirituel”. In these, the
composer
was very skillful at casting
popular artists as protagonists in his
works: Antoine Hugot (1761–1803)
played the flute, Etienne Ozy
(1754–1813) the bassoon, Jean Lebrun
(1759 –1809) the horn and Michel
Yost (1754 –1786) the clarinet. The
compositional symbiosis that united
Vogel and Yost was an open secret:
Michel Yost wrote solo lines that “fit
him like a glove” and then had Vogel
orchestrate them. These disastrous
compositions
were then sold, however,
as “composed by M. Michel” …
The Trois Sinfonies recorded here
for the first time were published in
1784 with printed orchestral parts of
the highest quality. But they are yet
another representation of the crisis of
the symphony as was being noticed in
Northern Germany, London and Paris
with a feeling of unease. The genre (
at least here) had reached its limits.
Listeners had heard enough impressively
orchestrated arpeggios, primarily
in D and A major, or powerfully
inflated unison passages. The sighing,
expiring slow movements with
swarms of triplets in the inner voices
were no longer “à la mode”. One
couldn’t even give the French a small
pleasure with pizzicatos or “con sordino”:
they rejected these sounds as
“adulterations”!
Although the middle movements of
the second and third symphonies presented
a possible way out of the crisis,
the use of sinfonia concertante elements
contradicted the concept of the
symphony as a work “for orchestra”.
Consequently, it seemed better to
solve the problem of the middle movement
by using a theme and variations,
as Vogel had already done in the first
symphony. In actual fact, however, all
of the Gordian knots in the concerts
of the “Loge Olympique”, which took
place in a room at the Tuileries palace
(like the “Concert Spirituel”) ended
up being solved. The series’
competitors hit upon the glorious idea of
commissioning Joseph Haydn in
Eisenstadt
to write six symphonies.
Fortunately,
Haydn was uncompromising
in his refusal to orient himself
to a model for these works (one that
still remained to be sent). Instead, he
caught the French unawares with his
symphonies 82 –87, which contained
the formerly forbidden menuet, and
instead of the intolerable amount of
repetition of previously used material
(Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony also suffers
from a 40 % surplus of such repetition),
Haydn places thematic work
and all types of surprising developments
in the foreground.
Vogel’s Premier Livre represents the
most highly developed type of French
symphony, with all of its valid parameters,
that could be found on the eve
of the Haydn-hype triggered by the
65-member orchestra of the “Loge
Olympique”, which violently swept
away all aesthetic rules that had
applied until that moment. In the place
of social “feel-good” music – Vogel’s
music is full of such coquettish
moments
that audiences were used to
greeting with applause, even during
running performances – cropped up
an autonomous artwork that no longer
permitted the intervention of young
fops and powdered ladies. There are
good reasons why one thus searches in
vain for a “Deuxième Livre des Sinfonies”…
“Whom the gods love…” – Démophon
had not even been presented
before Vogel was buried, dead of alcoholism.
But due to its subject – audiences
saw the same events on stage
that were happening outside the doors
of the opera house as well as in the
streets and on the squares of revolutionary
Paris – this opera remained an
absolute hit and was performed until
1820. But the plan to raise a monument
to its composer ended up being
forgotten. This recording, made
with the bayerische kammerphilharmonie
in cooperation with the Studio
Franken (situated in Nuremberg where
Vogel was born) and OehmsClassics,
however, makes up for that!
Reinhard Goebel
Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler