A Meistersinger (German for "master singer") was a member of a German guild for lyric poetry, composition and unaccompanied art song of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. The Meistersingers were drawn from middle class males for the most part.
A Meistersinger (German for "master singer") was a member of a German guild for lyric poetry, composition and unaccompanied art song of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. The Meistersingers were drawn from middle class males for the most part.
The Meistersinger maintained and developed the traditions of the medieval Minnesingers. They belonged to the artisan and trading classes of the German towns, and regarded as their masters and the founders of their guild twelve poets of the Middle High German period, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, Konrad von Würzburg, Reinmar von Zweter, and Heinrich Frauenlob. Frauenlob allegedly established the earliest Meistersinger school at Mainz, early in the 14th century. The schools originated first in the upper Rhine district, then spread elsewhere. In the 14th century schools operated at Mainz, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Würzburg, Zürich, and Prague; in the 15th at Augsburg and Nuremberg. Nuremberg, under the leadership of Hans Sachs, became the most famous school in the 16th century, by which time Meistersinger schools had spread all over Germany and farther north, to Magdeburg, Breslau, Görlitz, and Danzig.
Each guild had various classes of members, ranging from beginners, or Schüler (corresponding to trade apprentices), and Schulfreunde (equivalent to Gesellen or journeymen), to Meister. Meisters were poets who could both write new verses to existing melodies and invent new melodies. The poem was technically known as a Bar or Gesetz, the melody as a Ton or Weis. The songs were all sung without accompaniment.
The rules of the art were set down in the so-called Tabulatur or law-book of the guild. The Tabulatur dealt with three matters: (1) The kinds of poems and the parts of a meistergesang; (2) permissible rhymes; (3) mistakes to be avoided, including errors of delivery, of melody, of structure and of opinion and, especially, errors of rhyme, word choice, or meter. Poetry was to them a mechanical art that could be learned through diligent study, not something dependent on divine inspiration.
Their songs cover a variety of strophic forms corresponding to the many new tunes which the Meistersingers invented and gave complicated names such as Gestreiftsafranblumleinweis (Little striped saffron flower melody), Fettdachsweis, Vielfrassweis (Melody of eating much), geblümte Paradiesweis (Flowery paradise melody), etc. More attention was paid to fitting the syllables to the melody than to the text's meaning, sentiment, or message. The various songs were divided into three strophes, and each strophe was divided into two Stollen and a discant or Abgesang. Plate, in "Die Kunstausdrücke der Meistersinger", [1] gives a long list of the various features of rhythm and rhyme in this complicated poetry, in all of which can be observed a singular likeness to the technicalities invented by the lesser, and even by the better, poets two centuries earlier in Southern France.
The meetings took place either in the town hall ( Rathaus ) or, more frequently, on Sundays in the church. Three times a year, at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, special festivals and singing competitions were instituted. At such competitions or Schulsingen, judges (Merker) were appointed to criticize the competitors and note their offences against the rules of the Tabulatur. Prizes were awarded, and those who sang ill were fined. The prize was sometimes money, sometimes a crown, as at Nuremberg in the time of Hans Sachs. Flowers had also an important part in these competitions. Often in the older days one singer would hang up a wreath as a challenge and as a reward for victory. The meistersinger often wore a costume which was not seldom motley and which was often sumptuous.
In Nuremberg, where the master singers flourished particularly, the special festivals were opened with free singing, in which anybody might sing, though not belonging to the corporation. In this the choice of the subjects was left comparatively uncontrolled. Then followed the chief singing, when only those who belonged to the corporation were allowed to sing, and only on scriptural subjects. The judges sat behind a curtain. There were four: one watched whether the song was according to the text of the Bible, which lay open before him; the second whether the prosody was correct; the third criticized the rhymes; the fourth the tunes. Every fault was marked, and he who had fewest received the prize.
Meistersinger poetry played a large part in German town life of the 15th and 16th century. The tradition often reinforced German burgher values; as such, it was middle-class popular art rather than high art. The "Meistergesang" culminated in the 16th century and declined shortly thereafter. Meistersinger traditions lingered in southern Germany as late as the 19th century: a society in Ulm dissolved in 1839; the last school died out at Memmingen in 1875.
The plot of Richard Wagner's 1868 opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg revolves around the guild of Meistersingers and their singing contest.
A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditionally not cut. With Hans von Bülow conducting, it was first performed on 21 June 1868 at the National Theater in Munich, today home of Bavarian State Opera.
Minnesang was a tradition of lyric- and song-writing in Germany and Austria that flourished in the Middle High German period. This period of medieval German literature began in the 12th century and continued into the 14th. People who wrote and performed Minnesang were known as Minnesänger, and a single song was called a Minnelied.
Walther von der Vogelweide was a Minnesänger who composed and performed love-songs and political songs ("Sprüche") in Middle High German. Walther has been described as the greatest German lyrical poet before Goethe; his hundred or so love-songs are widely regarded as the pinnacle of Minnesang, the medieval German love lyric, and his innovations breathed new life into the tradition of courtly love. He was also the first political poet to write in German, with a considerable body of encomium, satire, invective, and moralising.
Hans Sachs was a German Meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright, and shoemaker.
Strophic form – also called verse-repeating form, chorus form, AAA song form, or one-part song form – is a song structure in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. Contrasting song forms include through-composed, with new music written for every stanza, and ternary form, with a contrasting central section.
Neidhartc. 1190 – c. 1240 was one of the most famous Minnesänger. With around 1500 documented strophes of his songs surviving, Neidhart has the largest corpus of surviving lyrics of any Minnesänger, suggesting the great popularity of the songs. In addition, and quite unlike any of his contemporaries, many melodies to his songs have been preserved: manuscripts have almost 70 melodies to 55 of his songs.
Heinrich Frauenlob, sometimes known as Henry of Meissen, was a Middle High German poet, a representative of both the Sangspruchdichtung and Minnesang genres. He was one of the most celebrated poets of the late medieval period, venerated and imitated well into the 15th century.
Cerdd Dant is the art of vocal improvisation over a given melody in Welsh musical tradition. It is an important competition in eisteddfodau. The singer or (small) choir sings a counter melody over a harp melody.
An art song is a Western vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano accompaniment, and usually in the classical art music tradition. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the collective genre of such songs. An art song is most often a musical setting of an independent poem or text, "intended for the concert repertory" "as part of a recital or other relatively formal social occasion". While many vocal music pieces are easily recognized as art songs, others are more difficult to categorize. For example, a wordless vocalise written by a classical composer is sometimes considered an art song and sometimes not.
Heinrich von Morungen was a Minnesinger, whose 35 surviving Middle High German songs are dated on both literary and biographical grounds to around the period 1190–1200. Alongside Walter von der Vogelweide and Reinmar he is regarded as one of the most important Minnesänger: he was "the most colourful, passionate, tender and musical of the Minnesänger" and his work "marks a new and brilliantly effective stage in the development of the German lyric."
Der von Kürenberg or Der Kürenberger was a Middle High German poet and one of the earliest Minnesänger. Fifteen strophes of his songs are preserved in the Codex Manesse and the Budapest Fragment.
Bar form is a musical form of the pattern AAB.
Reinmar von Hagenau was a German Minnesänger of the late twelfth century who composed and performed love-songs in Middle High German. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest Minnesänger before Walther von der Vogelweide, a view widely shared by modern scholars. Although there are uncertainties as to which songs can be reliably attributed to him, a substantial body of his work — over 60 songs — survives. His presentation of courtly love as the unrequited love of a knight for a lady is "the essence of classical Minesang".
Spruchdichtung or Sangspruchdichtung is the German term for a genre of Middle High German sung verse. An individual work in this genre is called a Spruch, literally a "saying", and may consist of one or more strophes.
Middle High German literature refers to literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit. This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third literary movement of these years was a new revamping of the heroic tradition, in which the ancient Germanic oral tradition can still be discerned, but tamed and Christianized and adapted for the court.
Sebald Heyden was a German musicologist, cantor, theologian, hymn-writer and religious poet. He is perhaps best known for his De arte canendi which is considered to have had a major impact on scholarship and the teaching of singing to young boys. He wrote hymns such as "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß". It has been speculated that Heyden was the world's first true musicologist.
The Master of Nuremberg is a 1927 German silent historical comedy film directed by Ludwig Berger and starring Rudolf Rittner, Max Gülstorff and Gustav Fröhlich. It is based on the 1868 opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner. It was considered artistically unsuccessful because of its overly theatrical presentation. It is also known by the alternative title The Meistersinger.
The Jenaer Liederhandschrift is a 14th-century manuscript containing lyrics and melodies to songs in Middle High German. The majority of the lyrics belong to the genre of Spruchdichtung and, with 91 melodies, the manuscript is the single most important source for the music of this genre.
The Minnerede is a form of late medieval rhyming speech. In contrast to the shorter Minnelieder in canzonal form, it was not sung but spoken. Most of the texts have only a few hundred verses, the Minnereden, which is assigned to around 600 texts in German studies, but also extensive texts such as 'Die Minneburg', 'Die Minnelehre' by Johann von Konstanz, 'The Hunt' by Hadamar von Laber and 'Mörin' by Hermann von Sachsenheim counted. The rhyming couplet verse is predominant, but there are also some strophic minnereden. Many Minnereden are reflections on courtly love held in first-person form or narratives of allegorical events and dreams, the focus of which is the unfulfilled desire of the Minnenden.
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