Early life and studies

Violin virtuoso and composer Johan Jakob Nagel spent his youth in several countries, and became a widely travelled man who spoke four languages. He was born in Teltsch (Telč), Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), on 18 June 1807. An important part of his childhood was spent, however, in Italy, where he was the violin student of Niccolò Paganini for a period – or at least made the older master's acquaintance. After a period as a traveling musician, he was hired as a violinist at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice between the ages of fifteen and twenty (1822−27). His adolescence would also have included studies under the Austrian violinist and composer Josef Mayseder, sometime before late 1829 when Nagel, at age 22, performed in Stockholm.

Time in Sweden from 1829

Once on the Swedish music scene, Nagel soon established himself as a distinguished name and in November 1830 he was hired by the Hovkapellet (the Royal Court Orchestra) as a violinist and guitarist. Like his Italian teacher, he also played the guitar, an instrument that was useful in the opera orchestra in works such as the canzonetta in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which in the 19^th century was routinely accompanied by the guitar or violin instead of the mandolin.

Nagel was active in the Hovkapellet for nearly 35 years until his retirement on 1 September 1865. Alongside this permanent job he made frequent solo appearances with his own and others' compositions around Sweden and, until 1843, in extensive tours abroad. He performed in countries including Finland, Russia, Denmark, Germany, Poland, England and Holland. A trip across the Atlantic, with an extended leave of absence from the Hovkapellet, began in the summer of 1841, lasting until the summer of 1843 and was comprised of concerts in the United States, Canada and Cuba.

Contemporary critics expressed unanimous admiration for the sureness and elegance of his playing, especially in flageolet and pizzicato passages. Furthermore Gustav Schilling’s music encyclopaedia from 1842 described Nagel’s performances as ‘expressive and imbued with deep feeling, so that his Adagio playing can be placed alongside that of the foremost violinists’.

In 1835 John Jacob Nagel and Anna Sophia Noël (1812−1863) were married. She was the daughter of a Frenchman who came to Sweden with Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. Six years after her death he married the widow Elvira von Konow (1824−1891). Nagel died in Stockholm on 7 July 1885, leaving behind his wife and stepchildren from his second marriage as his closest relatives. He became a member of the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (the Royal Swedish Academy of Music) in 1857.

Nagel as a composer and improviser

Nagel mainly composed music in which the violin has a prominent role. In addition, there are two ballet works, songs and a group of guitar pieces on his list of works.

Several of his violin compositions are closely connected with his own performances as soloist. The variation works and La mancanza delle Corde / Burlesque musicale were heard frequently on tour. During performances of the latter composition, Nagel would successively cut the strings of the violin with a penknife,as the music moved from the four strings of the introduction to the piece’s completion on the lone remaining G-string. Nagel's violin concerto is associated with the great American concert tour in the early 1840s – it is dated ‘New York 1841’ and dedicated to the American people. Later, on 3 March 1844, the concerto was performed in Stockholm at the Riddarhussalen (the great hall of the House of Nobility) under the title Souvenir de l'Amérique.

Nagel's early concerts also included improvisation, as in Uppsala on 28 March 1830 where the program contained: ‘A Theme, chosen on the spot, by anyone among the listeners, varied ex tempore and executed by the undersigned" (Upsala stads och läns tidning 27/3 1830), and in the Riddarhussalen on 22 May where an ‘Improvisation on several Themes from the Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, etc., in the manner of Paganini, extemporised by the undersigned’ (Stockholms Dagligt Allehanda 17/5 1830) was performed.

There were also pieces from the rest of his creative output that were played during the composer's lifetime. The art song ‘Nordmön i söder’, dedicated to Jenny Lind, was very popular for a time, and the ballet Blommorna (or Blomsterfesten) with music by Nagel was presented 35 times in the early 1860s.

His chamber music includes Souvenir de Bolltorp − a duet for violin and cello written by a pair of composers; Nagel wrote the music along with the Hovkapellet’s cellist Gustaf Adolf d’Arien.

Martin Edin © 2016
Trans. Jill Ann Johnson