VI

We must again give our attention to Germany, where a musical development parallel to that of the Provençal and French chivalry had been going forward since the twelfth century. Art music as such had so far been confined in Germany to the church; the composers and scholars devoted to its practice were to be found largely in the monasteries. But about the beginning of the twelfth century an attempt was made by poet-singers of noble birth to found a school of secular song expressing their ideals of life and appealing to people of their rank. This conscious effort of aristocratic singers shared with the unconscious achievement of folk song a certain range of topics, notably historical and sacred, and a certain naïveté of attitude. In other respects it differed from it radically, both in content and in manner, for it was founded upon the ideal of chivalry and was full of the spirit of gallantry. But, while the southern poet-singers made profane love their one great theme, German chivalric poetry in a curious way blended the mediæval adoration of the Virgin Mary with the worship of women in general. From this devotion to Fru Minne (Dame Love) it was called Minnegesang and its singers Minnesinger. The beauties of Nature, ever present in German poetry, also formed an important subject in Minnegesang.

Though simple enough in itself, this first art song of the Germans never equalled the ingenuousness of the Volkslied, for a burden of knowledge hampered the flight of the poets’ imaginations and chilled the ardor of their sentiments, and, in the attempt to escape from base realities, they frequently lost themselves in elusive abstractions. The allegorical element, almost absent in the Volkslied, was largely represented in Minnegesang, which is full of poetic allusions to the heavenly virtues that lead to salvation, and to the deadly sins that pave the road to perdition. Minnegesang was more personal and direct than the Volkslied, which tends to socialize or generalize an individual experience until it applies and appeals to all. A product of the castles, Minnegesang was frequently a matter of ambition, encouraged by the hope of finding favor with a princely patron or winning the love of a high-born lady. The Volkslied, a product of the people, made no such appeal and was its own reward. The tournaments of song were therefore limited to the Minnesinger and represented a counterpart of those other contests which in the period of chivalry brought out physical prowess and skill.

There is an element of partisan controversy in the writings of even recent historians concerning the respective merits of the Troubadours and Minnesinger, some maintaining the superiority and originality of the latter, while others, like Combarieu, call them simply ‘imitators’ of the Troubadours. The fact that they appeared somewhat later is not sufficient evidence for such a statement, however, and may be explained by the fact that in Germany chivalry flourished later. The German knights, it will be remembered, did not participate in the first Crusade. Doubtless the same influences making for exalted expression were at work in both countries and the early epics of which we have spoken were in a sense the common property of both. Moreover, the epic poems of the Celtic people (the Breton lais, etc.) preceded the Provençal lyrics and probably reached Germany by direct road.

A fundamental difference between the two schools, which strongly argues a separate origin, is the fact that in form Minnegesang approached the heavier epic style of the Northern bards, rather than the lighter lyric vein of the Southern singers. Inasmuch as German poetry contained a great variety of verse-forms with a varying number of syllables, Minnegesang developed a great variety of rhythms. Unlike Romance lyricism, German composition never forsook the principle of accentuation for the sake of mere syllabic proportion (enumeration). In other words, the Germans considered only the accented syllables, subordinating the unaccented so that they might be either eliminated or increased in number without disturbing the rhythmic contour; which means a very different relation between text and melody. Melody corresponding with verbal accent makes for correct emphasis and a natural and logical declamation.

The stereotyped contour of the Troubadour songs which their composers sought to overcome by excessive melodic ornament is not found to the same extent in Minnegesang, where the change of hypermetres and catalectics provides in itself a considerable variety of rhythm even where the same melody is retained for a succession of stanzas. This sort of adaptation must have required considerable skill in execution; it has, moreover, given no end of trouble to modern transcribers in the determination of phrase limits. In the example here given we follow the interpretation of Riemann. It is an excerpt from the Jena manuscript, being the only example dating from the twelfth century. Its author is ‘old Spervogel,’ and its serious contemplative character will illustrate the difference between the works of Troubadours and Minnesinger. We give only the first line of the melody in four of the thirteen forms which it assumes over the various texts of succeeding verses.

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

1. Swa ein vriund dem an-dern vriun de bi-ge-stat—

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

2. Swer si-nen gůt-en vriund be-hal-ten—wil—

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

3. Mich nympt wun-der daz—eyn rey-ne by-der-be man—

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

4. Eyn e-de-le kun-ne sti-get of—by ey-nem man—

A form especially cultivated by the Minnesinger was the aubade (Tagelied) which originated with the Provençal Troubadours. In its German form it usually represents a lover, lingering near his beloved, whom the watchman’s trumpet call announcing the dawn’s approach speeds on his homeward way. In the earliest known Tagelied, by Diet von Eist (1180), the song of a bird is heard instead of the watchman’s call, but in later examples the horn-call assumes greater prominence and is even represented by a melody without text at the beginning or in the middle of a verse. In one by Wizlaw such a sequence of apparently superfluous notes at the end of the first verse puzzled transcribers until recently, when its significance was discovered. In subsequent verses of this example words are supplied for the notes of the call.

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

List du in der min-ne dro,
ichse den lech-ten mor-ghen fro.
De vo-ghe-l’n sin-ghen den tac,
her ist ho.

The ‘instrumental’ portions may perhaps have been hummed in imitation of the horn, but the principle is the same. Still later we find examples, such as the Nachthorn and Taghorn of the Monk of Salzburg, which are marked Auch gut zu blasen (‘Also good for blowing’).

The Tournament of Song in the Wartburg.

One of the early names of Minnesingers is that of Tannhauser, or Tannhäuser, who was born between 1210 and 1220. To him is credited a Busslied (song of penitence), but it was probably in existence long before customary among penitents, and only later ascribed to him. The participation of Tannhäuser in the song tournament of the Wartburg as represented in the Wagner opera, is obviously a dramatic license of the composer, as the event took place before his birth, in 1208. One of the most striking figures is Nithart von Riuwenthal, who endeavored to infuse new life into the courtly formalism of Minnegesang by drawing upon the folk song and folk dance.[80] He called the new genre which he created, and which was a mild parody upon the peasant tunes then popular in rural Austria and Bavaria, dörperliche singen (village singing), in contrast to the höfische singen (courtly singing) of this class. His dance songs differ from other Minnesinger’s lyrics in their syllabic structure, as of necessity their pronounced rhythm did not admit superfluous syllables. The melodic correspondence between rhyming verses already noted in Troubadour chansons is a prominent feature with Nithart, but more remarkable than this is the fine imitation of melodic elements corresponding to short rhyming lines within simple verses (Stollen or Abgesang).

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

Wis wil-kom-men mei-nen schin!
Wer möcht uns er-gez-zen din?
Wan du kannst ver-swen-den pin.
Daz sagt uns di-siu diet.

Der win-der ist so lang hie g’leg’n.
Uf dem veld und in den weg’n:
Wil-li-klich gab er den seg’n.
Da er von hin-nen——schiet.

Nu wil du di hel-de a-ber ern.
Und wil klei-nin vo-ge-lin die sue-ze stim-me lern.
Daz sie bald in dem
Wald ir sue-zen sank ge-mern.

Wizlaw von Rügen, another Minnesinger who tried to leave the beaten path, showed a marked tendency toward a more direct and faithful reflection of the emotional contents of his song. His senende claghe (longing complaint), in which he emulates what he refers to as the senende wise (melody) of the untutored man, is an evidence of the attempt of Minnesinger at ‘characterization,’ and we frequently meet with such specific names of Töne or Weisen, which indicate the intention to convey an individual sentiment in melody. The apparent sameness in many of the tunes seems less insistent when we consider the question of tempo which must have differentiated their performance, but which was never indicated in the manuscripts.

Hermann der Damen and Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed Frauenlob for his songs in praise of women, were famous for their Leiche, allegorical sacred songs on the order of the ‘sequences,’ with melodies strictly adapted to a text, consisting of irregular stanzas with little repetition. Of the songs of the two greatest Minnesinger, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, only the poems exist: the melodies passing for theirs are of doubtful origin.

The greatest patrons of Minnegesang among the sovereigns of Germany were the Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), who died in 1190; Conradin, the last of the Hohenstauffen, who died 1268; and Wenceslaus of Bohemia, a contemporary of Conradin. Minnegesang was not to the same extent as Troubadour poetry a courtly art, yet the castles of these sovereigns naturally became centres of development, as did also the courts of the Austrian dukes, when Heinrich von Melk, der Küremberger, Dietmar von Eist and Nithart (Neidhart) held forth; the courts of the margraves of Bavaria and Swabia, where we find the margrave of Rietenburg, Meinloh von Seveningen, Spervogel, and Reinmer von Zweter; and finally the castle of the landgrave of Thuringia, which boasted of such bright ornaments as Tannhäuser, Heinrich von Veldecke, Walter von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, of whom the last two have attained the rank of national poets. The formal, stately character of Minnesong prevented its becoming as popular as the Troubadour song in France. Another reason for this is the fact that the more pronounced caste feeling of the Germans forbade them to enlist the assistance of musicians of inferior station. Whatever accompaniment there may have been was provided by the poet-singers themselves.