Beheim [Behaim], Michel

(b Sülzbach, nr Weinsberg, Württemberg, 29 Sept ?1420; d Sülzbach, 1472–9). German poet and Meistersinger. After training under his father, a weaver, he entered the service of the imperial chamberlain, Konrad von Weinsberg, as a singer (‘fürtreter’) in the 1440s. He named as his models Muskatblüt, whom he probably met in Konrad's household, and Heinrich von Mügeln. He performed his own songs mostly at royal and noble households in southern Germany in which he was employed: the Bavarian court in Munich (from at least 1447); the court of Albrecht Achilles, Margrave of Brandenburg, in Ansbach (1449–53, interrupted by a Scandinavian journey that took him to Copenhagen and Trondheim); the Bavarian court in Munich (1453–4); the court of King Ladislaus of Bohemia in Prague and Vienna (1455–7); in Austria, for Duke Albrecht VI (1454, 1458) and at the court of the Emperor Frederick III in Vienna (1459–65); and finally the court of the Elector Palatine Frederick I (1468–?1472).

Most of Beheim's extant works derive from sources close to the original, some of them autograph (D-HEu cpg 312 and 334, Mbs Cgm 291). This provides biographical and historical material and permits accurate study of the structure of his 12 Töne. An individual style could hardly be expected, and the great majority of the melodies are still formed from conventional figures, phrases and combinations of phrases. There is unmistakable interaction of text and Ton (see Ton (i)), and there are several examples of correspondence; structural elements and sometimes whole Töne have a semantic function (the Gekrönte Weise, for example, which resembles a dance-song, expresses joy). The articulation of the melody usually follows the text rather than the rhyme scheme. Beheim tends to favour the return of the melody, less often a polished rounding off, at the end of a stanza. As with other examples, there are no instrumental parts, and no ouvert and clos endings. Like others before him, he held himself, as a poet, aloof from the instrumentalists who were his rivals for princely favour; he felt that only an art in which the music was inseparable from the words could serve the divine order.

The Angstweise with its chronicle texts breaks away from the traditional epic metre (Bogenzeilen) in the last part of the stanza. Otherwise Beheim’s techniques were for the most part those of medieval monophony which was probably losing popularity in his lifetime at those courts that had their own chapels and choirs. In 1472 he returned to his birthplace, which lay within the territory of the palatinate where he had served; there he held the position of village mayor until his violent death. He was, if not the last, certainly one of the last of his kind.

WORKS

Editions: Das Singebuch des Adam Puschman nebst den Originalmelodien des Michel Behaim und Hans Sachs, ed. G. Münzer (Leipzig, 1906/R) [complete edn]‘Die Melodien und ihre Überlieferung’, ed. C. Petzsch, Die Gedichte des Michel Beheim, ed. H. Gille and I. Spriewald, iii (Berlin, 1971) [complete edn]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Petzsch: ‘Zur Notierungsweise im Beheimcodex cgm 291’, AMw, xxiii (1966), 252–73

C. Petzsch: ‘Michel Beheims “sleht gülden Weise”’, Mf, xx (1967), 44–55

C. Petzsch: ‘Text-Form-Korrespondenzen im mittelalterlichen Strophenlied: zur Hofweise Michel Beheims’, DVLG, xli (1967), 27–60

H. Gille and I. Spriewald, eds.: Die Gedichte des Michel Beheim (Berlin, 1968–71) [incl. poetry edn; vol.iii incl. C. Petzsch: ‘Die Melodien und ihre Überlieferung’, 451–86, with transcrs.]

C. Petzsch: ‘Michel Beheims “Buch von den Wienern”: zum Gesangsvortrag eines spätmittelalterlichen chronikalischen Gedichtes’, AÖAW, cix (1972), 226–315

W.C. MacDonald: ‘Whose bread I eat’: the Song-Poetry of Michel Beheim (Göppingen, 1981)

F. Schanze: Meisterliche Liedkunst zwischen Heinrich von Mügeln und Hans Sachs (Munich, 1983–4)

H. Brunner and B. Wachinger, eds.: Repertorium der Sangsprüche und Meisterlieder des 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, ii (Tübingen, 1986), 17–206

I. Spriewald: Literatur zwischen Hören und Lesen: Wandel von Funktion und Rezeption im späten Mittelalter: Fallstudien zu Beheim, Folz und Sachs (Berlin, 1990)

CHRISTOPH PETZSCH/MARTIN KIRNBAUER