It is difficult, if not impossible, to say just how much the Troubadours and the Trouvères influenced the development of music. The Troubadours found a footing in Sicily and southern Italy and influenced the growth of the so-called Ars Nova, which will be treated in the next chapter. Melodies of the Trouvères were adopted by the Netherland composers as the foundations of their masses. These are definite points at which secular and religious music certainly touched. If, beyond this, the relations between them are vague and hard to trace, the movements of which the Troubadours and the Trouvères are manifestations are none the less of vital significance in the history of music. Through them the undercurrent of real free music, which we may be sure never ceased to flow even when the crushing weight of scholasticism was heaviest, welled to the surface. They represent spontaneous joy and human delight in ages fettered with theology and logic. They represent the real source of music. Those who would believe that the great Italian Renaissance was not primarily a return to classicism but an all-powerful and general awakening of man to the beauty and delight of earth will find in the music of the Troubadours and Trouvères this natural delight expressed. If, as it happened, music was the last to rise up in the freedom of the Renaissance, it was because music got no help in her need of expression from a study of the music of the ancients; music had to build slowly her own means, unaided by precedent and past accomplishment, fed and encouraged only by the natural love of man’s heart to sing, a love which is here attested in the dark ages and to which she finally turned.

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.

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