Emil Vogel

Johannes Emil Eduard Bernhard Vogel (Wriezen an der Oder, 1859 – Nikolassee, near Berlin, 1908) was a German musicologist specialising in Italian music of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His work laid the bibliographical foundations for the study of the frottola, the madrigal and the canzonetta, and some of his publications remain standard references today.

He was self-taught in Dresden and Berlin before studying with Spitta, from whom he learned music history. Between 1880 and 1883 he obtained degrees in philology from the universities of Berlin and Greifswald. Thanks to a scholarship from the Prussian government, he travelled through Italy as an assistant to F. X. Haberl on the edition of Palestrina's works. On his return he earned his doctorate in Berlin with a thesis on Monteverdi, published in 1887.

From 1893 he was responsible for organising the music library of the Peters publishing house in Leipzig, becoming its first librarian in 1895. Under his direction it grew into one of the largest private music libraries in Europe. At the same time, he founded and edited the first Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters, until ill health forced him to retire in 1901.

His two-volume bibliography of secular printed Italian music was initially revised by Einstein and later by other specialists. In addition to the title and contents of each volume, it includes indexes of literature, poets, dedicatees, printers and publishers. His thesis on Monteverdi was the German reference work for six decades and encouraged German editions of the five-part madrigals, which were completed after his death by Hugo, Leichentritt and Arnold Mendelssohn.

Vogel's legacy rests above all on his bibliographical and cataloguing work, which still serves as the starting point for research into Italian Renaissance and early Baroque music.