(Ger.; pl. Töne).
A term used in medieval and Renaissance German literature to describe a verse form together with its melody. The verse form includes the entire metrical and poetic scheme of the stanza. Several poems could be, and were, written to the same Ton, particularly from the 14th century onwards. Among the Meistersinger it was common practice to write poems on a received Ton, usually by another Meister: Hans Sachs (1494–1576), perhaps the most famous of the Meistersinger, wrote 4286 Meisterlieder in only about 275 Töne, of which he composed 13 himself.
This is more clearly illustrated by reference to the example of Klingsor’s Schwarzer Ton. Ex.1 shows the four surviving complete versions of the melody and their dates (for facsimiles of three of the versions see Sources, MS, §III, 5, figs.26, 27, 28). In spite of the enormous chronological distance between the three manuscripts, the four versions agree melodically in many details: all the versions evidently derive from the same melodic scheme, and the differences may be explained by the influence of oral transmission as well as by changes of melodic style over the centuries.
The metrical scheme and the rhyme scheme of the Ton are inseparable from the melody. They may be illustrated as in Table 1. These remained practically unchanged through all the centuries in which the Schwarzer Ton was used. The musical structure also remained unchanged, characterized by the repeat of the entire Stollen melody (A) at the end of the Abgesang (the so-called third Stollen).
The Schwarzer Ton has an uncommonly long and interesting history. Its melody and poetic form arose around 1235. In the course of the 13th century it became the Ton for a whole series of strophic poems belonging to the large complex of the Wartburgkrieg (which was also the basic material for Wagner’s Tannhäuser). About 1283–90 the anonymous epic Lohengrin was written with 767 stanzas in the Schwarzer Ton. At the same time the Spruchdichter Boppe used the Ton for several parodistic Spruch-stanzas. Numerous Meisterlieder from the 15th century on the most varied topics survive in this same Ton. (Wachinger lists those up to about 1520.) The Ton was still known and popular in the 16th and 17th centuries: Hans Sachs wrote no fewer than 22 poems on it between 1537 and 1556. The last known reference is in the records of the Nuremberg Meistersinger guild in 1639 when the Ton was already some 400 years old. However, Wagenseil included it as one of the Töne still in use at Nuremberg in 1697; and only with the gradual end of Meistergesang in the 18th century was the Schwarzer Ton finally forgotten.
Frequently used Töne received names by which they could be cited. Normally these names were taken from the content or from the beginning of the poem for which the Ton was originally created, or that of the best-known poem in that Ton. From the 15th century the name of the Ton was usually given at the heading of the poem, e.g. ‘In dem Ton: Ich stund an einem Morgen’ (after the opening of a song surviving in many 16th-century sources), or ‘In des Berners Weise’ (using a Ton belonging originally to an epic poem on Dietrich von Bern). With the Meistersinger it was normal for the name of the Ton to be accompanied by the name of its composer: ‘Walther von der Vogelweide, Feiner Ton’; ‘Heinrich Frauenlob, Langer Ton’; ‘Regenbogen, Grauer Ton’; ‘Hans Sachs, Rosenton’; ‘Ambrosius Metzger, Veneris Lustgartenweis’.
The use of the word ‘Ton’ in this sense goes back to the 11th century, but it fell into oblivion in the 18th century and was brought back into use in the philological and musicological literature of the 19th century. Middle High German ‘dôn’ (or tôn) in this sense is derived from the Latin tonus. (Other meanings of the word have other etymologies.) In this sense, too, the term ‘Weise’ (or wîse) was synonymous with Ton.
The concept of Ton as a stanza form together with all its appurtenances arises largely from the importance of the stanza in medieval German poetry. Here it played a greater role than in more recent literature. The following were written in stanzas: (1) many epics, and in particular almost all the heroic epics surviving in written form since the beginning of the 13th century – long poems that tell primarily of events at the time of the migration of the nations (Nibelungenlied; Kudrun; the many epics about the deeds of Dietrich von Bern) together with other epic poems (Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Titurel, Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel, Lohengrin, Salman und Morolf); (2) lengthy didactic poems (Tirol und Fridebrant, Winsbecke, Hadamar von Laber’s Die Jagd); (3) all kinds of lyric, including Minnesang, Sprüche, Meistergesang, sacred songs, folksongs, political songs, convivial songs etc. It seems that long poems written in rhyming couplets were spoken but strophic poems could always be spoken or sung.
See also Bar form and Meistergesang.
J.C. Wagenseil: ‘Buch von der Meister-Singer holdseligen Kunst’, De … civitate noribergensi commentatio (Altdorf, 1697/R), 433–576
J. and W. Grimm: Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1854–1960)
A. Heusler: Deutsche Versgeschichte, ii (Berlin, 1927, 2/1956)
U. Pretzel: ‘Deutsche Verskunst’, Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss: mit einem Beitrag über altdeutsche Strophik von H. Thomas, ed. W. Stammler, iii (Berlin, 1957, 2/1962), 2357–546
W. Hoffmann: Altdeutsche Metrik (Stuttgart, 1967)
S. Beyschlag: Altdeutsche Verskunst in Grundzügen (Nuremberg, 1969)
H. Brunner: ‘Epenmelodien’, Formen mittelalterlicher Literatur: Siegfried Beyschlag zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. O. Werner and B. Naumann (Göppingen, 1970), 149–78
E. Schumann: Stilwandel und Gestaltveränderung im Meistersang: vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Musik der Meistersinger (Kassel, 1972)
B. Wachinger: Sängerkrieg: Untersuchungen zur Spruchdichtung des 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1973)
H. Brunner: Die alten Meister: Studien zu Überlieferung und Rezeption der mittelhochdeutschen Sangspruchdichter im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1975)
J. Rettelbach: Variation – Derivation – Limitation: Untersuchungen zu den Tönen der Sangspruchdichter und Meistersinger (Tübingen, 1993)
HORST BRUNNER