Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/296

Rh 272 V G V O G 38 - 5 F., and, although the gulf itself never freezes, a thin ice-crust forms along the shores in December, keeping ships ice-bound for from thirty to forty-five days. The settlement of Vladivostok, though founded only in 1861, had in 1886 12,500 inhabitants, chiefly military; and for hundreds of miles inland the sole population con sists of the small military posts by which communication is maintained up the Suifun to Lake Khangka and the Cossack settlements on the Usuri. Vladivostok is con nected with headquarters by telegraph. Since the transference of the navy workshops from Nikolaievsk the place has gained in importance. It has a pro-gymnasium for boys (60 pupils), a club, and a newspaper. The imports of both Russian and foreign goods during the last five years have reached an average of from 2 to 3 millions of roubles ; but the exports are insignificant. Some 3000 or 4000 Coreans find employment in the Gulf of Peter the Great in gathering the edible seaweed Laminar ia saccharina, of which about 70,000 cwts. (45,000) are sent to China annually. The discovery of gold in the neighbouring alluvial deposits brought together some hundreds of Chinese, but the Russian Government compelled them to withdraw. The amount of gold is, however, not believed to be remunerative. The Gulf of Peter the Great was discovered in 1852 by the French corvette &quot; Capricieuse,&quot; and named the Golfe d Anville. Two years later Count Putyatin, on board the frigate &quot; Pallada,&quot; de scribed the south-western part of the gulf and the Bay of Possiet. In 1855 an English squadron mapped its middle portion as far as Lefu (Askold) Island, and gave it the name of Victoria Bay. The whole gulf was mapped in 1859 by the Russian ships &quot;America&quot; and &quot;Stryelok,&quot; and two years later a Russian post, which after wards received the name of Vladivostok, was established. VOGELWEIDE. See WALTER VON DEE VOGELWEIDE. VOGHEE A ( Vicus Irise), a town of Italy, in the pro vince of Pavia, and 19 miles by rail to the south-south west of that city, on the Staffora, formerly the Iria (a tributary of the Po), here crossed by a fine bridge. The fortifications erected by the Visconti in the Middle Ages have given place to a series of shady promenades. The large church of San Lorenzo dates its foundation from the llth century, but was remodelled in the baroco style about the beginning of the 17th. The neighbourhood is fertile and produces much silk, in which, as well as in corn and wine, an active trade is carried on. The popula tion in 1881 was 10,785. VOGLER, GEORG JOSEPH (1749-1814), usually known as Abbd Vogler, organist and composer, was born at Wiirzburg, June 15, 1749. His father, a violin maker, while educating him for the church, took every opportunity of encouraging his musical talent, which was so marked that at ten years old he could not only play the organ well, but had also acquired a fair command of the violin and some other instruments without instruction. In 1769 he prosecuted his higher studies at Bamberg, remov ing thence in 1771 to Mannheim. Here he composed a ballet for the elector Karl Theodor, who, charmed with his talent, sent him to Bologna, to study under the Padre Martini. Unsatisfied with the method of that learned theorist, he studied for five months under Valotti, at Padua, and afterwards proceeded to Rome, where he was j ordained priest in 1773, admitted to the famous academy | of Arcadia, made a knight of the Golden Spur, and appointed protonotary and chamberlain to the pope. On his return to Mannheim in 1775 Vogler was appointed court chaplain and second &quot; maestro di cappella.&quot; He now established his first great music school, to which Winter, Ritter, Kraus, Danzi, and Knecht came for in struction. His pupils were devoted to him, but he made innumerable enemies, for the principles upon which he taught were confessedly opposed to those of all other teachers whatsoever. He had invented a new system of fingering for the harpsichord, a new form of construction for the organ, and a new system of musical theory founded upon that of Valotti. Mozart condemned the fingering as &quot; miserable.&quot; The proposed change in the construction of the organ consisted in simplifying the mechanism, intro ducing free-reeds in place of ordinary reed-stops, and substituting unisonous stops for the great &quot; mixtures &quot; then in vogue. 1 The theoretical system, though pro fessedly based upon Valotti s principles, was to a great extent empirical, and, like the scheme for revolutioniz ing the organ, has long been forgotten. Nevertheless, a certain substratum of truth seems to have underlain all his new heresies ; and, by virtue of this, in spite of a rage for reform amounting almost to madness, Vogler un doubtedly exercised a powerful influence over the progress of musical science, and numbered among his disciples some of the greatest geniuses of the period. In 1778 the elector removed his court to Munich. Vogler followed him thither in 1780, but, dissatisfied with the reception accorded to his dramatic compositions, soon quitted his post, and travelled for some years in Spain, Greece, Armenia, remote districts of Asia and Africa, and even Greenland, in search of uncorrupted forms of national melody. In 1786 he was appointed &quot; kapellmeister&quot; to the king of Sweden, founded his second music school at Stockholm, and attained extraordinary celebrity by his performances on an instrument called the &quot; orchestrion,&quot; a species of organ invented by himself. In 1790 he brought this instrument to London, and per formed upon it with great effect at the Pantheon, for the concert-room of which he also constructed an organ upon his own principles. Gerber alleges that organ pedals were unknown in England until Vogler introduced them, during his residence in London. This assertion is dis proved by a MS. Concerto, by Handel, now in the Royal Library at Buckingham Palace, dated February 17, 1740, and containing an obbligato pedal part; nevertheless, it is certain that the abbess pedal-playing excited great attention. His most popular pieces were a fugue on themes from the &quot; Hallelujah Chorus,&quot; composed after a visit to the Handel festival at Westminster Abbey, and A Musical Picture for the Organ, by Knecht, containing the imitation of a storm. From London Vogler proceeded to Rotterdam and the chief towns on the Rhine. At Esslingen he was presented with the &quot; wine of honour &quot; reserved for the use of sovereigns. At Frankfort he attended the coronation of the emperor Leopold II. He then visited Stockholm, and after a long residence there, interrupted by endless wanderings, once more established himself in Germany, where his compositions, both sacred and dramatic, received at last the full credit that was due to them. To trace his journeys from end to end of Europe would be impossible. We hear of him at Berlin in 1800, at Vienna in 1804, and at Munich in 1806. But while at Frankfort in 1807 he received an invitation from Louis I., grand-duke of Hesse- Darmstadt, offering him the appointment of &quot;kapellmeister,&quot; with the order of merit, the title of privy councillor, a salary of 3000 florins, a house, a table supplied from the duke s own kitchen, and other privileges, which determined him to bring his wanderings at last to a close. At Darmstadt he opened his third and most famous music school, the chief ornaments of which were Gans- bacher, Weber, and Meyerbeer. Giinsbacher had been his pupil at Vienna. Weber had studied under him in 1803, and once more sought his old master s help in 1810, though rather in the way of advice than instruction. Meyerbeer had been first introduced to him by means of a fugue which he criticized very severely, though he saw in it so much talent that he invited the composer to become his pupil. The three young students were inseparable, and their affection for their old master was unbounded. 1 An organ biiilt on the &quot; unisonous system &quot; stood for many years in Wornum s Music Hall, Store Street, London.