The variety of artistic forms cultivated by the Troubadours and Trouvères was great. Of them we can distinguish the dramatic works, the romances, the stories or fabliaux, and the lyric works proper. All of these, excepting, perhaps, the dramatic works, were at least in part sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. The romances sometimes approximated the length of epics, extending to 20,000 lines or more. Of the romances there is one charming and widely known example in ‘Aucassin and Nicolette,’ a long story of love and adventure, frequently interrupted with a lovely song. It is probable that these romances were recited in a somewhat formal manner through the more narrative parts, perhaps chanted in the emotional sections, leading up by means of a more and more musical delivery to the lyrics, which undoubtedly had their set melodies. The fabliaux were short and witty stories, usually satirical when not actually indecent. The lyrical poems were divided by their singers into many classes, the distinctions being largely nominal or fanciful. We can recall the canzonets, or love-songs, including the serenade (the ‘evening song’) and the aubade (‘morning song’). The pastourelle, or conventionalized song of shepherd life, became the Pastoral of the Golden Age of France, one of the most typical art-forms of the pre-Revolutionary period. There were further the sirvantes, written to praise some beneficent prince; the roundelays, with a set refrain after each verse or stanza; and the dance songs, intended to be sung actually during dancing. Then there were the tenzone, contentious songs, usually in dialog, often set debates on some nice point of love. Sometimes the tenzone were little masterpieces of satire. One, composed by a monk, has been preserved to us. It represents a debate or trial, in which the monks accuse the women of having stolen the art of painting invented for ecclesiastical purposes and having applied it to their cheeks. The women reply that the monks are no worse off because their sex is able to cover the wrinkles under their eyes. Finally St. Peter and St. Lawrence adjudge that the women shall be allowed from the ages of twenty to thirty-five to paint in. But, adds the poet, ‘the contract was soon broken by the women: they lay on more red and white than was ever used for a votive painting and have in consequence raised the price of saffron and other dye-stuffs.’
We should not leave the Troubadours without referring to the Cours d’amour, or Courts of Love, which were supposed to have been held, in all solemnity, during the middle ages. This institution, constituted like a court of law, heard nice questions as to conduct in love, and gave decisions for one or the other party, decreeing how the lover and his lady should act in all conceivable situations. As a matter of fact, it is extremely doubtful whether such courts were actually held, but they were at least a fanciful institution of the time and are represented in many of the songs. It has been thought by some that the courts were actually convened and that noble ladies and their courtiers came from all over Europe to submit the fruits of their experience and pass upon some such solemn question as: ‘Is it between lovers, or between husband and wife, that the greatest affection, the liveliest attachment, exist?’
At all events, the courts of love existed in the songs of the Troubadours. For instance, one complainant brings the following question, presented in the form of a song by a Troubadour:
‘A knight was in love with a lady who was already engaged, but she promised him her favor in case she should ever happen to lose the love of him who was then her lover. A short time subsequent to this the lady and her adorer were married. The knight then laid claim to the love of the young bride, who resisted the claim, maintaining that she had not lost the love of him who had become her husband.’ The judgment in this case was supposed to have been passed by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was later to become the wife of Henry II of England. She refers to a previous judgment, which is regarded as having all the force of a precedent in law, and says: ‘We venture not to contradict the decree of the Countess of Champagne, who, by a solemn judgment, has pronounced that true love cannot exist between a married couple. We therefore approve that the lady in question bestow the love which she has promised.’
III
Germany, at this time, was hardly behind France in civilization and refinement of manners. It was natural, then, that the courtly song should find its way into Germany. In South Germany—Bavaria and Swabia—the indigenous folk-song continued to dominate. But in the northern provinces the influence of the Trouvères was strongly felt by way of Flanders and the Lower Rhine. The noble singers here called themselves Minnesinger—or ‘Singers of Love.’ Their songs are almost as pure and refined in artistic structure as those of Provence, but their subject matter is more earnest and scholarly. In place of the fanciful courtly compliments paid by the southern French singers to their ladies, we find that deep and sincere reverence for womanhood which Tacitus noted among the German barbarians and which continued through the centuries.
The lyrical songs of the Minnesingers were divided into three classes: the Lied, or song; the Lerch, or lay; and the Spruch, or proverb. The difference, musically, was mainly a matter of form, rigid laws governing the formation of the strophes. The Lied was the mostly purely lyrical of the three. The Lerch was more general in subject-matter, partaking sometimes of the narrative. The Spruch was essentially one of the German proverbs which so richly fill the language even to this day, but it was usually developed to make a somewhat lengthy stanza. The central idea of the proverb, its simile or its ethical substance, would be repeated and enlarged upon, becoming lyrical in character though retaining the idiomatic directness and simplicity of the original. Thus the Minnesong tended to keep a homely character which the Provençal lay never had.
Among the famous Minnesingers (who were also poets in the modern sense) were Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. Both are familiar to all lovers of Wagner. The former is one of the chief characters in the opera Tannhäuser. He appears as the pure lover of Elizabeth, in contrast to Tannhäuser, whose sensual and pagan character is shown by his affair with the unholy goddess Venus. In the second act of the opera is shown one of the tournaments of song which were characteristic of the age. Tannhäuser, Wolfram, and others, sing the praises of love, each revealing his personal character in the attitude he takes toward the great passion. Wolfram is the genuine Minnesinger, idealizing the object of his devotion, insisting upon her divinity (her likeness to the Virgin Mary), and upon the fleshless, unsensual nature of love in its true estate. One gathers, also, from a hearing of the opera, that he was a typical Minnesinger in that his song was something of a bore. Certainly the Minnesongs, in their ambling lengthiness, would bring sleepiness to a modern audience. But Wolfram, we must remember, was not only a courtly minstrel, but a great epic poet, one of the great figures in German literature.
Walther von der Vogelweide, perhaps the most inspired lyricist of his time, figures by name in Die Meistersinger. Walther, the hero, candidate for the degree of Meistersinger, is asked who taught him his art. He replies that he learned it from Walther von der Vogelweide and from the birds. This causes the Mastersingers to shake their heads, for inspiration has little part in their formal music.
The last of the Minnesingers, and one of the most famous, was Heinrich von Meissen, called Frauenlob—‘Praiser of Women.’ His songs were so ardent in their idealization of womanhood that it is related how the women of Mayence, when the singer died, bore him to his grave and poured over it, mingled with their tears, the richest of Rhenish wines.