Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

62 Marianne Tråvén
Georg Joseph Vogler’s music school
In the 1780s, possibly owing to the inability of the Academy of Music to
recruit students, the Royal Swedish <strong>Opera</strong> formed a school under Georg
Joseph Vogler, the Kapellmeister in residence at the time. Vogler came to
Stockholm in 1786 as the director of the opera house orchestra and stayed
until 1792; 18 he returned in 1793, leaving Stockholm for good in 1799. Apart
from his duties at the opera, Vogler was also supposed to serve as the music
teacher to the crown prince.
In 1776 Vogler had written a vocal manual, Stimmbildungskunst, but did
not see fit to translate it into Swedish. However, quite a few of his music
manuals were translated by the end of the century, such as Clavér-schola
and Organist-schola, both published in Swedish in 1798. Vogler’s vocal manual
is a small volume, dedicated mostly to the singing of solfeggio, using
only five of the solfeggio syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol), and reusing some of
the syllables to complete the scale (Vogler 1776, p. 4). It gives some indication
of what he might have taught in Stockholm. Technical information is
scarce, but Vogler gives a few hints as to what he thought was essential for
the vocal arts: portamento, the ability to hold long notes without wavering,
pronunciation, intonation and messa di voce. 19 The singer should guard
against singing through the nose or in the throat and not open the mouth
too little or too much. It was also important to merge the chest voice with
the head voice imperceptibly. Vogler did not recommend a mixed voice, but
considered the chest voice and the head voice to be separate entities. The
young singer should be trained using a limited number of notes at the beginning
and then augment the vocal range upwards and downwards as the
voice developed. To understand harmony, the student should learn to sing
duets and ensembles first, instead of solo arias, using the works of the Italian
masters Clari, Stefani and Marcello.
18 The date for his departure is unclear, but it seems likely that he left Stockholm
following the assassination of Gustav III. (Grave & Grave 1987, pp. 5–6)
19 It is hard to know if Vogler used the term portamento to designate something that
today we would probably call legato, that is, joining the notes together, or a classic
portamento, a “slur, which is the gliding of the voice through every possible sound
between note and note” (García 1982, p. 20). In fact, many of the eighteenth-century
manuals seem to use the term for what today would be called legato. Giovanni Battista
Mancini, for instance, says: “By portamento I mean the passing and blending of the
voice from one tone to another with perfect proportion and union, in ascending as well
as descending … It must be a straight and limpid graduation that must pass, support,
and blend from one tone to the other.” (Boodaghian 2006, p. 24). As for messa di voce,
Vogler does not use the term at all, but describes the crescendo and decrescendo used
in the vocal exercise. (Vogler 1776, p. 5)