George Joseph Vogler, known also as Abbé (or Abt) Vogler (1748-1816), was a German musician. He composed operas and other musical pieces, became famous as an organist, and invented an organ with pedals and several keyboards. Browning seems to have in mind the complex musical harmonies of which the instrument was capable. See lines 10, 13, 52, 55, and 84 of the poem. See also the Encyclopædia Britannica.
[3]. [Solomon]. Legends about Solomon and his power over the spirits of earth and air are common in Jewish and Arabic literature.
[9 ff]. [building]. The idea of building by music is an old one. See the classical story of Amphion and the walls of Thebes, Coleridge's Kubla Khan, and Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, lines 272-274.
[19]. [rampired]. Furnished with ramparts.
[23]. The [reference] is to St. Peter's in Rome.
The musician's imagination takes fire from his playing, and his music seems like a glorious palace which he is building. The notes are conceived as spirits doing his bidding (stanzas i-iii). As he proceeds the images change, and heaven and earth seem to unite with him in his creative activity: light flashes forth, and heaven and earth draw nearer together. Now he sees the past, the beginnings of things, and the future; even the dead are back again in his presence. His imagination has anulled time and space. As he thinks of his art, it seems[page 259] more glorious to him than painting and poetry: these work by laws that can be explained and followed, while music is a direct expression of the will, an act of higher creative power.
When the music ends he cannot be consoled by the thought that as good music will come again. So he turns to the one unchanging thing, "the ineffable Name." Thus he gains confidence to say, "there shall never be one lost good." All failure and all evil are but a prelude to the good that shall in the end prevail. So he returns in hope and patience to the C major, the common chord of life.
ABT VOGLER is famous, not only for its confident optimism, but as an example of Browning's power of annexing a new domain—that of music—to poetry.
Where does the musician cease to speak of Solomon's building and begin to describe his own? Note, in stanza ii, how he speaks first of the "keys," and afterwards has in mind the notes; how he speaks of the bass notes as the foundation, and the upper notes as the structure. Where is the climax of his creative vision? What does he mean in line 40? Is he right in saying music is less subject to laws than poetry and painting? Why is he sad when his music ceases? Why does he turn to God for consolation? Follow carefully the argument in stanza ix. Is it convincing? What analogy does he find between music, and good and evil?