With the decline of feudalism and chivalry and the development of the industries the middle class acquired a social prominence which roused dormant ambitions and developed latent abilities. The craftsmen had formed societies with strictly graded membership, a most elaborate set of statutes and rigid ceremonial of initiation. They were as much a social as an intellectual manifestation being developed to mutual improvement and recreation, and music entered largely into their program. Association with Minnesingers who were not of noble rank and who, instead of bearing the title Ritter (knight), were called Meister (masters), gradually awakened the desire of the good burghers to emulate the example of the aristocracy and cultivate song in the manner of Minnegesang. The story that Emperor Otto I was founder of Meistergesang (master song), and gave to twelve masters, among them Heinrich Frauenlob, Barthel Regenbogen, and Klingsohr, something like a charter, has long been proved a myth, since the emperor and these personages were not even contemporaries. But the fact that Frauenlob, who was one of the last Minnesingers, is claimed as one of the founders of Meistergesang, shows how closely the latter followed upon the former. There is little doubt, however, that the master-song was first cultivated in a Meistersingschule (school of master song) in Mayence, whence it spread to other cities, foremost among them Nuremburg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ulm, and Munich.
The Meistersingschulen recruited their members from the singing-schools of the artisan guilds. Candidates were subjected to a rigorous examination and had to account not only for their previous life, their family connections, moral standing, and religious convictions, but had to pledge themselves to hold the ideal of their art, to live a pure and worthy life, and to be loyal and helpful to the fellow-members of the school. There were ‘school-friends,’ ‘scholars,’ ‘poets,’ and ‘singers.’ Above them in rank were four Merker—markers or judges; one of whom had to compare the text of the song with the scriptural passage upon which it was founded, while the second judged the syllabic accent, the third the rhyme, and the fourth the tune. The highest grade was that of Meister, a title conferred upon him who was capable of fixing the standard of both text and music. Prize contests were a feature of the public performances and carried on the tradition of the song tournament of chivalry. The meetings were held in church. The prize consisted of a string of ornamental coins, a bunch of artificial flowers, or the permission at the end of the meeting to stand at the church door and receive from the parting audience a fee in current coin. The spirit of mediæval artisan life and of scholastic formalism was paramount in the organization and all its activities. It is admirably reflected in Richard Wagner’s Meistersinger von Nürnberg where, embodied in the figure of Beckmesser, the Merker becomes the type of the pedant who rates the letter higher than the spirit.
As religion was foremost in men’s minds at that period, Meistergesang dealt at first mainly with religious topics and turned out prosy biblical paraphrases with numerous historical and allegorical allusions. The versification followed closely the models of the Minnegesang, the structure of the masters’ strophes being almost identical with that of their aristocratic compatriots. Even the terms Weise and Ton used by the later Minnesingers to denote metre and melody, were adopted by the master singers. The song itself was in the form of a so-called Bar; its parts were Gesätze; each Gesatz consisted of two Stollen (strophe and anti-strophe) sung to the same melody; then followed a Stollen in the tune of the last Gesatz. The rules governing the composition of these songs were called Tabulatur. The verse-form or Ton was given special names, such as the lange Ton or graue Ton, or suggesting the contents, were called Beerweis, Brunnenweis, Blutton, Lindenschmidtton, or named after the authors, as Regenbogenton, Schilherton, etc. Frauenlob was held in such esteem by the greatest of the mastersingers, that Hans Sachs himself wrote some twenty-five songs or more in the Frauenlobton. Although the structure of these songs was hidebound in formal restrictions, the spirit reflected a sturdy sincerity which was in keeping with the racial temperament of the singers and not without charm.
Few manuscripts of the Meistersingers contain the music of the songs, and their notation is not always reliable. They employed neumes, like the Minnesingers before them, but they limited themselves almost exclusively to semi-breves, reserving the minims only for the ornamental figures. These figures, called Blumen[81] (flowers, fiorituri) when inserted as an interlude or at the final cadence made a pleasing effect, in contrast to the even movement of the melody which, without any perceptible rhythmic division, was likely to be monotonous. Recent musical authorities, among them Riemann, incline to the opinion that the mastersingers’ melodies were far better than the reputation they enjoy. While some writers claim that they accompanied their songs on the harp, the violin, lute, or zither, others make no mention whatever of instrumental accompaniment, and Genée, in his book on Hans Sachs and his time, distinctly states that they were sung without accompaniment.[82]
Among the most famous Meistersingers were Heinrich Frauenlob (mentioned above), Hans Foltz, Hans Rosenplüt, Konrad Nachtigall, Konrad Murner, Michel Behaim, Jörg Schilher, Bartel Regenbogen, Heinrich von Ueglin, and Muskatblüt. But far above his colleagues towers Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Nuremberg. His achievements as poet, dramatist, and musician are uneven in quality; his farces assure him of a more prominent place in German literature than the rank accorded to him in musical history for his setting of the psalms. But taken as a whole his personality typifies what was best in the art of his class at that period—an art practised under conditions which did not favor the free and bold flight of creative genius. It was Hans Sach who first of all the mastersingers openly espoused the cause of the new church by greeting the appearance of Luther in his famous song, Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall. In his naïve, sincere devotion to the new creed he undertook also to ‘revise’ some of the older master songs to make them conform to the new spirit, and his contributions to Protestant church music were highly esteemed by his contemporaries.
Individual impulse, both emotional and musical, being curbed by rigid rules, Meistergesang was a less direct expression of personality than Minnegesang, and a less frank reflection of sentiment than the Volkslied. Lacking spontaneity and wider human appeal, it fostered a spirit of severe formalism which could not have much influence upon the development of music in general. On the other hand, this formalistic severity imparted a technical and spiritual discipline which was not to be undervalued, and the stress laid upon a serious and dignified attitude toward the art of music may have done no little toward counterbalancing the frivolous tendencies which sprang up here and there during the religious, social, and political unrest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nor was the relation between Meistergesang and the Reformation without influence upon the development of Protestant church music. For in the slow and measured movement of the songs, dealing with sacred themes and sung unisono by the members of the Singschule at the opening of their meetings, one can recognize an essential feature of the Protestant Chorale.
Thus we may conclude with the statement that the real value to posterity of the art movements we have discussed lies in their influence upon the two great social movements that signalize the dawn of the modern era, namely, the Renaissance in Italy and the Reformation in Germany, both of which are again reflected in the music of a later day. The new spirit is echoed in the sublime words of Hans Sachs:
‘Awake! Draws nigh the break of day,
I hear upon the hawthorn spray
A bonny little nightingale.
Her song resounds through hill and dale.
The night descends the Western sky,
And from the East the dawn draws nigh.
With red ardor the flush of day
Breaks through the cloud banks, dull and gray.’[83]
A. v. E.
FOOTNOTES: