On this day in 1814, Abbé Vogler died.

From that infallible source: 

Georg Joseph Vogler, also known as Abbé Vogler (June 15, 1749 – May 6, 1814), was a German composer, organist, teacher and theorist. In a long and colorful career extending over many more nations and decades than was usual at the time, Vogler established himself as a foremost experimenter in baroque and early classic music. His greatest successes came as performer and designer for the organ at various courts and cities around Europe, as well as a teacher, attracting highly successful and devoted pupils such as Carl Maria von Weber. His career as a music theorist and composer however was mixed, with contemporaries such as Mozart believing Vogler to have been a charlatan. … “one of the most bizarre characters in the history of music”.^[1]

I can find nothing about Vogler in my little home library. Though I did come to learn that I have the Harvard Dictionary of Music (1962). I actually exclaimed this out loud as I was looking at my card catalog, “I have a dictionary of music?!?” That’s what happens when I don’t get around to dusting all of my crappy old books over the winter as I usually do.

Daily Reading April 6

• Browning’s “Abt Vogler“

Penultimate verse

And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know.

Robert Browning

Stay well & keep reading!