A German tradition of songwriting and performance among the emerging bourgeois classes that flourished particularly in the 16th century. It provided the lower and middle classes in the cities with a religious and secular education: whether as active members or as audience at the concerts, they could become aware of matters which would otherwise have been to them unavailable to them or difficult for them to learn. It thereby contributed to the increasing literacy of the bourgeoisie that characterizes the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) has given many people at least some idea of German Meistergesang; but of course the romantic-poetic picture Wagner presented bears only partial resemblance to the information collected through research by literary scholars and musicologists. The following brief, general description is an attempt to give an account of the present state of research.
3. Origins, locations, personalities.
6. Organization of the guilds and performance of lieder at the concerts.
7. Spruchgedichte and stage plays.
HORST BRUNNER
Meistergesang is the composition and performance of Meisterlieder by the Meistersinger. Meistersinger were those citizens of German cities, usually south German imperial cities, who from the 14th century to the 17th (with isolated examples still in the 18th and 19th centuries) formed themselves into guilds (Gesellschaften) for the composition and performance of Meisterlieder. (Current usage refers to the Meistersinger guilds as Singschulen (singing schools), although the Meistersinger themselves applied this term only to the events in which they performed their lieder publicly, in the sense of a concert.) As a rule the Meistersinger were artisans belonging to a town’s middle and lower classes, although clergymen, lawyers and teachers were also found among them. They participated in the guilds in addition to their normal occupation. They all composed their lieder in German, basing them on more or less similar subjects, which altered in the course of time, and according to generally accepted artistic rules codified in the Tabulaturen of the 16th century and which changed only slightly over the centuries. At both the public Singschulen and the private Zechsingen, lieder were always performed strictly in accordance with the Schulordnungen (regulations). Throughout the country guilds were organized along the same or similar lines (the organizational regulations appeared in the Schulordnung); and there was much active exchange among the guilds, doubtless encouraged by the tradition of Wanderjahre (‘journeyman years’). Finally, all the guilds were under the strict control of the city authorities who oversaw the observance of the Schulordnung as well as general moral, religious and political laws. The Meistersinger, moreover, shared a distinct awareness of their art and its significance. They are organically and typologically related, although not identical, to the German 12th to 15th century Sangspruchdichter.
Numerous sources are available for Meistergesang research, and they are still far from fully investigated. The most important are the approximately 150 manuscripts containing the Meistersinger lieder, whose number is estimated at about 16,000. The earliest of these manuscripts comes from the beginning of the 15th century, the latest from the 18th century. Generally they contain only the texts and not the melodies. Some contain the lieder of one particular Meistersinger, but the majority contain collections by different poets, often from diverse origins and times. There are no general principles governing either the choice or the order of the collections. The manuscripts are dispersed among numerous libraries, the most extensive and significant collections being in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Nuremberg, Weimar and Zwickau. In 1969 the Nuremberg Stadtbibliothek began to establish a central collection of copies of all Meistersinger manuscripts.
The melodies, which belonged to an almost exclusively oral tradition, are found in only a few sources. The most important and comprehensive of these are the Kolmarer Liederhandschrift, D-Mbs Cgm 4997 (c1460, presumably from Speyer); the Valentin Voigt manuscript Ju El.f.101 (1558, Magdeburg); Adam Puschman’s Singebuch, formerly in Breslau Stadtbibliothek 356, lost since 1945 (1584–8, Breslau); manuscripts of the Nuremberg Meistersinger Benedict von Watt in D-Bsb germ.f.25 (c1603) and f.24 (c1615), and in D-Nst Will 111.784 (c1616); and D-Nst Will III.792–6 (c1670 and after). Relatively few printed Meisterlieder were circulated in the 15th and 16th centuries, for after 1540 it was expressly forbidden to perform printed lieder at the Singschulen.
Further important sources of information are the extant Tabulaturen and Schulordnungen, the earliest of which is the Schulzettel (1540) of the Nuremberg Meistersinger. The Gründtlicher Bericht des deudschen Meistergesangs of Adam Puschman (1571, 2/1596; ed. B. Taylor, Göppingen, 1984) disseminated the Tabulatur and Schulordnung in print. Testimony that reveals the Meistersinger’s own awareness of their art and tradition is especially significant. To this category belong numerous songs whose subject is the Meistergesang itself, chronicles, and prefaces to manuscripts. One extensive musical and literary history from the viewpoint of the Meistersinger is Von der edlen und hochberühmbten Kunst der Musica, written in 1598 by the Strasbourg theologian and Meistersinger Cyriac Spangenberg (1528–1604). Information about the public face of the Meistersinger can be gathered particularly from the records of their meetings, which in Nuremberg and Augsburg were preserved for a long time, as well as from other archive material, especially correspondence with city authorities. Other sources include posters announcing Meistersinger’s events, paintings and other art objects. Finally there are informative reports about Meistergesang from contemporaries who were not themselves Meistersinger. The most important of these is the treatise on the Meistersinger of Nuremberg by the scholar Johann Christoph Wagenseil in his book De civitate noribergensi commentatio (1697). This account was Wagner’s most important source. (For further description of Meistergesang sources see Sources, MS, §III, 5, and figs.27, 28.)
Nothing is known as to why, when or where the first Meistersinger guild was founded. The Meistersinger of the 16th and 17th centuries assumed that it had begun in Mainz. It probably began some time in the 14th century. The Meistersinger themselves honoured a number of famous poets of the 13th and 14th centuries as the founders of their art. The best-known of the so-called alte Meister were Walther von der Vogelweide (d c1230), Reinmar von Zweter (d c1260), der Marner (c1230–70), Konrad von Würzburg (d 1287), Frauenlob (d 1318), Regenbogen (d after 1318) and Heinrich von Mügeln (d after 1371) (see Minnesang). None of them was a municipal Meistersinger for whom composing and singing was an avocation: they were professional travelling poets, who sang for aristocratic audiences; their verses dealt primarily with religious, moral, chivalric and political topics. Present-day research refers to these poets as ‘Sangspruchdichter’. They may be considered the ‘founders’ of Meistergesang only insofar as the Meistersinger of the 14th and 15th centuries frequently imitated their poems and until the 18th century used a number of their Töne (see Ton (i)) for their own lieder. There are however significant differences between the Meistersinger and the Sangspruchdichter.
In the 15th and early 16th centuries there appear to have been Meistersinger guilds in Mainz, Nuremberg, Augsburg and Strasbourg, among other places; but specific information survives only about the Nuremberg Meistersinger. The best-known Nuremberg singers in this period were Fritz Kettner (documented 1392–1430), the baker Konrad Nachtigall (c1410–1484/5), the nailmaker Fritz Zorn (d 1482) and the weaver Lienhard Nunnenbeck (documented 1514–15), the teacher of Hans Sachs. The most important Nuremberg Meistersinger at this time was the barber and surgeon Hans Folz (c1435 or 1440–1513) from Worms, who in addition to many Meisterlieder also wrote carnival plays (Fastnachtspiele) and many other poems. After 1520 the guild received new stimulus through the activities of the shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494–1576), who provided an impetus far beyond Nuremberg for both the founding and renewal of Meistersinger guilds. His best-known contemporaries in Nuremberg were Hans Vogel (d between 1549 and 1554), Kunz Füllsack (traceable after 1517) and Wolf Buchner (traceable after 1521). Between 1556 and 1560 the Silesian Adam Puschman (1532–1600) also lived in Nuremberg. Between 1590 and 1630 Nuremberg Meistergesang experienced its last flowering. The most significant singers of this period were Georg Hager (1552–1634), Wolf Bauttner (1573–1634), Benedict von Watt (1569–1616), Hans Winter (1591–1627) and Ambrosius Metzger (1573–1632). The Nuremberg guild continued its existence after this time, finally disbanding only in 1774.
The most important Meistersinger guilds of the 16th and 17th centuries, besides that in Nuremberg, were in Augsburg (re-established 1534; the most famous poets of the 16th century being Raphael Duller, Onoferus Schwarzenbach, Sebastian Wild and Johann Spreng), Colmar (founded by Jörg Wickram in 1546), Breslau (founded in 1571; Wolfgang Herold and Adam Puschman), Strasbourg (re-established 1597; Peter Pfort, Cyriac and Wolfhart Spangenberg [Lycosthenes Psellionoros Andropediacus]), Mainz, Freiburg, Nördlingen, Ulm and Memmingen. In addition there were guilds in Austria (Schwaz, Wels, Steyr, Eferding) and Moravia (Iglau, now Jihlava). That in Ulm existed until 1839, and the last Memmingen Meistersinger died in 1922.
The majority of lieder surviving from before the Reformation deal with religious subjects, primarily the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, Christmas, the Passion, the Resurrection and the Creation. In addition there are songs in praise of Meistergesang, invitations to song, riddles, poems on the seven liberal arts, and a few narrative poems. Political subjects, so common in the verses of the Sangspruchdichter, are absent from Meistergesang, most probably because they were forbidden from the beginning by the censorship that customarily operated in the cities.
Meistergesang came into the service of the Reformation, becoming predominantly Lutheran, through Hans Sachs, who with his contemporaries and followers aimed to incorporate Luther’s translation of the Bible into verse, keeping it unchanged in language and content wherever possible. At the same time, secular Meistergesang began to become more important (fables, farces, historical material, narratives of medieval and humanistic origin, and songs about Meistergesang itself). During the late flowering of Nuremberg Meistergesang, around 1600, the development of larger song cycles seems to have been characteristic, above all with Benedict von Watt and Ambrosius Metzger.
Meisterlieder always consist of an odd number of stanzas, the minimum being three. The Meistersinger actually referred to their lieder as Bare (singular Bar; see also Bar form). The most important formal musical feature of the Meisterlieder is that they are not composed and sung in an individual verse form, each with its own melody. The composers almost always made use of existing Töne (singular Ton, synonymous with Weise), many of which had not been written by the Meistersinger themselves. By 1630 the number of different, traditionally accumulated Töne stood at about 1400. Some stemmed from the Sangspruchdichter of the 13th to 15th centuries; others were in the course of time attributed to the alte Meister, although the true originators of the unechte (not genuine) Töne were obscure Meistersinger. Thus from the 15th century to the 17th, for example, over 30 Töne were ascribed to Frauenlob, although only seven of them can actually be traced back to him. Finally, from the 15th century onwards, numerous Töne were composed by the Meistersinger whose name they bore.
The Meistersinger’s Töne normally consist of at least seven, but usually 12 or more, verse lines with an end rhyme. Most Töne have about 20 lines, but in the 16th and 17th centuries there were also occasional huge Töne with more than 100 lines. The shortest line consisted of one syllable, while the longest must contain no more than 13 syllables, as each line was supposed to be sung in one breath, according to a 16th-century rule (though some Töne do have longer lines). The rhyme scheme is both free and varied.
The verse and melody of the Töne are always constructed as follows: after the first part (first Stollen) follows the second part (second Stollen), which corresponds exactly both metrically and musically. The first and second Stollen together form the Aufgesang. Then follows the third part, the Abgesang, which is metrically and musically different. In principle, the length of individual parts is left open. Among the Sangspruchdichter in the 13th century this AAB structure was strictly adhered to and later taken over by the Meistersinger. In present-day German this verse form is called Kanzonenform; musicologists speak of ‘bar form’. Compare the ten-line Veilchenweise (ex.1) by Hans Folz to which is added the first stanza of a farce composed by Hans Sachs on 20 April 1546. The melody of the last lines of its Abgesang is identical with the last two lines of the Stollen. Reference at the end of the Abgesang to the melody of the Aufgesang is characteristic of many Meistertöne, and it was not unusual for the whole of the Stollen melody to be repeated at the end of the Abgesang (a repetition referred to as the ‘third Stollen’).
The Meistersinger melodies are all monophonic, even in the 16th century and after. They were always performed unaccompanied, normally by a solo voice, but occasionally by a chorus. In their musical work the Meistersinger carry through to the 18th century the German monophonic song tradition that can be traced back to the late 12th century, in particular the tradition of the Sangspruchdichter. Their historical orientation became more and more of an anachronism and explains why Meistergesang was a peripheral phenomenon in music history, at least from the second half of the 16th century: the general development of music bypassed the Meistergesang tradition, for the Meistersinger firmly rejected all its innovations.
Only a few of the more essential characteristics of Meistergesang melody can be described here. The manuscripts normally transmit the music without any indication of rhythm: the occasional suggestions of mensural notation in certain 16th-century sources are often contradictory and have little authority. One may assume that the normal rule was ‘declamatory’ rhythm determined by the text. Modal rhythm, whose application Gennrich extended to include Meistergesang, should be dismissed: the sources give not the slightest indication of it.
In their tonality the melodies are extremely varied and scarcely open to any meaningful generalization, apart from the observation that Meistersinger melodies cannot be explained in terms of church modes (see Schumann, 1972). The stylistic development is more easily discussed because several melodies come from the Sangspruchdichter of the 13th and 14th centuries and survive in 14th-century sources as well as in Meistersinger manuscripts of the 15th to 17th centuries (see the example of Klingsor’s Schwarzer Ton in the articles Ton (i) and Sources, MS, §III, 5). Comparing the versions of a single melody from manuscripts of different centuries can provide important clues to the characteristics of the melodic style. Variants in the melismas stand out (ex.2). Apparently melismas were frequent in the 14th century, extremely rare in the 15th and far more common again in the 16th and 17th. But in their use of these melismas the 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts are closer to the 15th century than to the 14th: they use them primarily to mark the ends of the melodic lines whereas in the 14th century the melismas are much more evenly distributed across the whole line. Particularly long melismas really began to appear only in the 16th century and were used increasingly afterwards.
The vocal range often seems much smaller in the later centuries than in the 14th. Further, there are more large leaps (of a 4th and more) from the 15th century on. This is evidently symptomatic of a changed stylistic ideal: elegance of melody was preferred in the 14th century, as the use of melisma shows, but later the emphasis was more towards clarity of movement from one note to the next.
The transmission of the melodies has both written and oral characteristics. Many Meistersinger were not musically literate: they were advised to learn the melodies by heart and remember them. This led to many unconsciously introduced variants of the original melodic conception. On the other hand the melodies were doubtless also worked over, improved and adapted when they were written down, as is particularly clear from melodies whose written history stretches back to the 14th century. It is difficult to generalize about the agreements and differences in the melodic lines in versions from different centuries. Some melodies remain substantially the same in spite of the changes in melodic preference already described, but for others the original melodic version is scarcely perceptible in later versions. In some cases it is as though the old melodies have been forgotten and new ones have been written to the metrical scheme. Over the centuries the melodies were adapted, consciously as well as unconsciously, to bring them into the most rational and easily perceptible forms with regular repetition of the individual melodic sections. Often structures which had originally been extremely complicated were simplified enormously: for performer and listener alike, simplicity of form was an ideal.
There is still much work to be done on the degree of contact between the style of Meistergesang and other musical forms in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, in particular the German Gesellschaftslied and folksong. Some melodic similarities have been established between Meisterlieder melodies and Protestant hymns; but the connection has yet to be defined precisely. Some particularly popular Meistertöne were actually used as hymns in the 16th century but in other cases of similarity the connection more probably rests merely on common usage of existing melodic models and has nothing to do with any direct interchange. It also remains to be shown whether the melodies of any of the Meistersinger have particular melodic characteristics or personal styles. There are several indications that this may be so.
The extant Schulordnungen (school regulations) from the 16th and 17th centuries offer an insight into the organization of the Meistersinger guilds (Gesellschaften) as well as into the customary practices of the concerts (Singschulen). The following sketch comes from the Nuremberg Schulordnung in the 16th and 17th centuries; the other guilds were basically similar. It is not known whether the Nuremberg guild was organized in this way in the 15th century.
The 12 oldest singers formed the nucleus of the Nuremberg guild. The directors were the three chosen Merker (markers), of whom the youngest functioned as clerk. Next came the two elected Büchsenmeister (treasurers), who presented annual accounts to the guild each year on the Sunday before St Thomas’s Day (21 December). On the same day membership fees were paid, elections took place, and new members were received.
A public concert was normally held once a month on a Sunday after the midday service. From the 16th century in Nuremberg the singing took place in various disused churches. (St Katharina, which appears in Wagner’s Meistersinger, was not available to the Nuremberg Meistersinger until after 1620.) The concerts were advertised by posters in the town (see fig.1). The focal point of the concert was the Hauptsingen (main performance), at which were allowed only lieder based on the scriptures and whose Ton was at least 20 lines long. The performance was always solo. During it the markers sat in a cubicle (Gemerk), which was draped in black material. Their task was to judge whether the song being performed conformed both in content and language to the Lutheran Bible. In addition, they noted whether both text and performance conformed to the strict rules of the Tabulatur and whether the melody was correctly performed. They listed every error, and the singer with the fewest errors was the winner. If several had the same number of mistakes or if there were none at all, the singers had to compete until there was an obvious winner. As a prize he received a silver chain hung with coins, the largest of which depicted King David, the patron of the Meistersinger (fig.2). The winner was allowed to keep the chain until the next concert. In addition, he was allowed to be one of the Merker at the next concert. Besides the public Hauptsingen, the Meistersinger usually held their own private Zechsingen at an inn, at which secular Meisterlieder were sung. This concert also retained the character of a competition.
Whoever wished to become a member of the guild first of all studied (was a Schüler) with one of its members; his main task was to learn a number of Töne and the most important rules of the Tabulatur. The widely held opinion that one could become a Meistersinger only by composing a Ton is not correct: many highly respected Meistersinger never composed a Ton. Even the writing of song texts was apparently not mandatory: many Meistersinger seem not to have been poets; they could perfectly well limit themselves to the performance of other people’s songs.
The literary activity of the Meistersinger was not solely confined to the composition and performance of Meisterlieder. In addition, some Meistersinger wrote Spruchgedichte (poems in rhymed couplets) and theatrical works. The Spruchgedichte were intended for spoken performance and were often printed. They dealt with a wide range of subjects, religious problems as well as political events, historical narratives and farcical or sentimental occurrences, advice for leading a good life, poems in honour of a city etc. In many places the Meistersinger guilds publicly performed dramatic works. Hans Folz in the 15th century and Hans Sachs in the 16th were by far the most productive artists in these areas, which strictly speaking had nothing to do with Meistergesang itself. From the 15th century until the 17th there were numerous writers of Spruchgedichte and plays who were not Meistersinger.
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