IV
The era of the middle-class or Burgher dominance in the German cities is represented, in music, by the institution of the Meistersang (master song). The Meistersang was the middle-class replica of the Minnesang. It arose shortly after the natural death of the Minnesang, early in the fourteenth century, originating, strangely enough, at Mayence, where Heinrich Frauenlob, the last of the great Minnesingers, died. The Minnesang, in fact, provided most of the forms and ideals for the Mastersong—at least in the beginning. But the era of isolated castles and wandering minstrels was not that of mercantile Germany, with strongly walled and independent cities, serving as stopping places for immense caravans coming from Italy and the far east. For these cities the merchant and artisan class held the purse-strings. They were the urban aristocrats. The Muses had perforce to eat from their hands.
The Burghers, being not only shrewd and practical, but prevented by business reasons from wandering the earth in search of fair ladies, organized their music in very formal fashion. They held regular singing contests at which aspiring musicians were heard and criticized. When these aspirants had proved their ability both to compose and to sing to the satisfaction of their elders they were admitted as Mastersingers. But the examination was rigid and the organization or guild of the Mastersingers was jealous. Inasmuch as it controlled the acceptance or rejection of candidates, it could set the rules. And, being thus constantly called upon to exercise its superiority, it tended to solidify its artistic principles into set rules of the most rigid character. The verses of each type of song must be organized in a set way. The music had to be made in accordance with the accepted practice. Certain transitions and ornaments were prohibited—not only regarded as less desirable than others, but ruled out under all circumstances. At the trials, which were usually held in the churches, the candidate’s song was judged by from one to four judges, called Markers, who were concealed from his view by a curtain. The judgment was delivered not according to the beauty of the song, but strictly according to the number of mistakes the singer had made, with reference to the rules of the guild. It is hardly to be wondered at, then, that the songs of the Meistersingers were dry and uninspired. To musical learning they may have contributed something. But to the art of music, on its poetical side, they gave next to nothing. They show, however, a certain clumsy fancy, as in the titles of the following songs: ‘Maidenly Grace,’ ‘The Nightingale,’ ‘The Glutton,’ ‘A Monkey Tune,’ and ‘The Pointed Arrow.’
The institution of the Mastersong, beginning in Mayence in the fourteenth century, spread over the greater part of Germany, as far as the Baltic Sea, and flourished for nearly four centuries. One guild was in existence at Ulm as late as 1839. The most famous of all the guilds is of course that of Nuremberg, one of the richest German cities of late mediæval times. And the most famous of the Mastersingers is the Nuremberg poet, Hans Sachs, ‘Schumacher und Poet dazu.’ Sachs, like Wolfram von Eschenbach, is a landmark in German literature. His output of vigorous homely poems was enormous, and the support he gave to the Lutheran Reformation in its early days contributed in no small measure to its propagation among the simple people.
But though the mastersong was musically sterile, the German folk-song, which had been vigorously developing through the centuries, now came to brilliant flower. The Lutheran Reformation was, as we have said, a popular movement. Without the hearty support and understanding of the masses it could never have succeeded. And Luther, understanding this, sought to draw the congregation as closely as possible into the church service. His chief means were the reading of the Bible and the liturgy in the native tongue instead of Latin, and the congregational singing of chorales. Hymns, as they are sung now in Protestant churches, were almost unknown in the Roman church. Their introduction was a complete innovation of the Lutheran movement. But Luther understood that congregational hymns could not be imported from another country and engrafted on his people. So he took the folk-songs that were actually being sung by the people and wrote devotional words to fit them. He caused many other tunes to be written in the folk-manner and in all probability wrote some himself (including the famous ‘Luther’s Hymn,’ ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’). These hymns spoke with a familiar voice of the people and were one of the powerful sources of strength to the church in its early days of persecution.
The purely musical results of this introduction of folk-song into the church service were very great. From Luther’s time onward the chorale—profound, dignified, and solemn—was the spiritual basis of German music. By it German music became emancipated from the Italian. The German church mothered its own musicians, greatest of whom was Johann Sebastian Bach. And the German chorale was one of the two great influences on later German song. From the ‘Spiritual Songs’ of Johann Sebastian Bach, which are nothing more than solo chorales, through the songs of the same name composed by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, to the direct precursors of Schubert, we see a direct line of succession. If the German music preceding Schubert was serious, closely knit, firmly based, we must lay it in large part to the influence of the German folk-song which had the same German qualities—and especially those of simplicity and honesty.
It was not solely in German Protestant music, however, that popular song became merged. Much earlier than this time it had exerted its influence on the music of the Roman church. As early as the fourteenth century it had become the fashion among church composers to use popular tunes for their masses. It is hardly probable that the motive was to draw the people closer into the church service by giving them a tune they were familiar with. In fact, the church had several times been obliged to rule that the people should not sing in the service, except on certain days, before and after the ritual. But the church composers of the thirteenth century and after were in the habit of writing florid counterpoint around a set melody, called the cantus firmus, and it became the fashion not to invent the cantus firmus for one’s self but to borrow it from any source at hand. In the course of time composers hit upon the scheme of borrowing secular tunes. Dufay, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, used one of the tunes of the people, L’homme armé, which has been called ‘the most popular tune of the Middle Ages.’ Such a universal favorite did it become that it was used in masses by nearly every church composer from Josquin de Près to Orlando di Lasso.