Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

by W. J. Henderson

The minnelied was the outcome, and for more than a century this form of courtly song was prized by the German people. While the Hohenstauffen dynasty remained on the throne (1138-1272), the literature of chivalry was patronised at court and the song of the minstrel was heard throughout the land. These singers were called minnesingers from the old German word "minne," which means "love"—the topic most dear to the minstrel heart. With the death of the first Frederick, the great Barbarossa, the star of the Swabian dynasty set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre were soon drowned in the turmoil of the internal disorders which beset Germany in the period of the Great Interregnum. This was a time after the death of the last Hohenstauffen, when various minor princes wore the imperial title without exercising its functions or its authority. The customs of chivalry naturally fell into disuse when there was no central home for them, and the minnesinger became a memory. The period of disturbance was ended with the accession to the throne of Rudolf of Hapsburg. This monarch was engaged during much of his reign in putting down the internal disorders, and his chief business was the overthrow of the powerful and independent nobles. He was furthermore largely occupied with quarrels with the Huns. The court language was changed from West Gothic to East Gothic, which was less national, and much of the southern culture which had characterised the reign of the Swabian emperors inevitably disappeared. The customs of chivalry sought shelter in the courts of minor princes, who were unable to give prizes of sufficient value to attract the knightly singers, engaged, as most of them were, in their final struggle for power and privilege.

The field of poetry and song was left to competitors of lower social standing. A versifying mania now began to pervade the lower classes. Blacksmiths, weavers, shoemakers, doctors, and schoolmasters sought to mend their fortunes by making verses. Poetry became dull, mechanical, pedantic; poets, conceited, shallow, and arrogant. The spirit of the age, filled with the instinct of preservation through co-operation against attack from without, led these people to form themselves into corporations, and Charles IV. (1346-78) gave them a charter. They spoke of twelve minnesingers as their models and masters,[37] and themselves they called mastersingers. They held periodical meetings to criticise each other's productions. Correctness was their chief aim, and they seem to have had little real conception of poetry. Every fault was marked and he who made the fewest was awarded the prize and permitted to take apprentices in the meistersinger's art. At the expiration of his apprenticeship a young man was admitted to the corporation and declared a "Meistersinger."

The first mastersinger of whom we know anything was Heinrich von Meissen, called "Frauenlob" because of his fondness for singing the praise of woman. He founded a guild of meistersingers at Mainz in 1311, and by the end of the fourteenth century most towns in Germany had similar bodies. The school reached its highest development in Nuremberg in the time of Hans Sachs (1494-1575). Sachs is an historical character, and there is abundant opportunity for the study of his style, as 6048 of his works are extant.[38] It was his period which Wagner selected for treatment in his comedy.

The order of meistersingers, however, continued to practise its calling long after this time. At Ulm the institution survived even the changes which the French Revolution effected in Europe. As late as 1830 twelve old mastersingers, after being driven from one refuge to another, sang their ancient melodies from memory in a little inn where the working men used to meet to drink their beer in the evenings. In 1839 only four of the singers survived; and in that year these remnants assembled with great solemnity and, declaring the society of mastersingers disbanded forever, presented their songs, hymn books, and pictures to a musical institution of Ulm. It is said that the last of the four died in 1876.

The meisterlied—mastersong—created by these singers was a lineal descendant of the minnelied, the song of the minnesinger. The latter was constructed in strophes, and each strophe consisted of three parts. The first and second parts were alike in metre and melody, and were called "Stollen." The third part was in a different metre and had its own melody, and it was called the "Abgesang," or aftersong. The minnesingers used three forms: the Lied (song), the Lerch (lay), and the Spruch (proverb). The lay was composed of differently constructed strophes, each with its own melody. The song was in several strophes, all built and set alike. The proverb was in a single strophe. The lied form was that adapted for their use by the meistersingers. Their songs consisted of three "Bars" (staves). Each staff was divided into three "Gesätze" (stanzas). The Gesatz was constructed in three sections, the first two being alike in metre and melody and called "Stollen." The third section differed in metre and had its own melody and was called the "Abgesang," or "aftersong." Thus we see that the "Bar" of the meisterlied corresponded to the strophe of the minnelied. The subjects treated in their songs were usually religious, though secular topics were not excluded. Sometimes didactic or epigrammatic themes were chosen. The tunes were all fixed, and the meistersinger's art was purely poetic. The tunes were called tones and had curious names, such as the blue tone, the red tone, the ape tone, the lily tone. In writing his comedy, Wagner, aiming, as he did, to reproduce in a lifelike manner the customs of the time, adhered to the rules of the meistersingers in the matter of song, and, in selecting a theme to designate the guild, used the melody of the "long tone" of Heinrich Müglin, a meistersinger of the early period. For the construction of the song he lays down the law in the address of Kothner to Walther, when the former reads the rules from the "Leges Tabulaturæ." These laws prescribe the form which we recognise as substantially that of the lied of the minnesinger.

Wagner drew his information as to the manners and customs of the meistersingers from the principal source of all our knowledge of them. This is a book entitled "De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio," written by Johann Christoph Wagenseil, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Altdorf, and published in 1697. Not only did the poet-composer find his facts there, but he took from the volume also the names of his characters, for Veit Pogner, Fritz Kothner, Conrad Nachtigall, Balthasar Zorn, Sixtus Beckmesser, and the rest of Wagner's meistersingers all walked the earth in their day and sang their artificial ditties in imitation of their masters, the minnesingers. Beckmesser, who appears as the "low comedian" of Wagner's work, seems to have been a worthy, though prosaic, person in his time. He was certainly not a butt of derision, such as Wagner's character becomes through his own stupidity and vanity.

The story of "Die Meistersinger" is, of course, Wagner's own. His representation of the characters of the masters is his own. The real Hans Sachs is, perhaps, not so well known as the real Wolfram von Eschenbach, but it is probable that he was only a little better than his fellow meistersingers. His works were more popular, and he was doubtless a man of superior ability. But it is not likely that he excelled the rest in refinement and artistic insight quite as much as he appears to do in Wagner's comedy. The story tells us that young Walther von Stolzing, a Franconian knight, has fallen in love, almost at first sight, with Eva, the daughter of Veit Pogner, the most substantial member of the guild, a man of some means. Pogner has decided that his daughter shall wed a meistersinger, and that she shall be the prize of the winner in the forthcoming contest of song. Her own choice is to operate only in so far as to permit her the liberty of rejecting the winner if she does not like him. But she must, in the end, marry someone chosen by a contest and approved by all the masters. Sachs endeavours to have the voice of the general public added to that of the guild, but Pogner is unwilling to introduce too many novelties into his experiment.

Walther meets Eva at the morning service of St. Catherine's Church, in which the principal meetings of the masters were held. She tells him that she must choose a master, and also that if he be not a master, she will have no other. David, an apprentice to Hans Sachs, arrives with other apprentices to prepare the church for an examination in song, and explains very vaguely to the young knight what he must do to become a master. Pogner and the other masters assemble, and Pogner, declaring that the desire of a knight to become a singer brings back the old times, explains the presence of Walther. He presently announces to the masters for the first time his plan in regard to his daughter's choice, a plan which gravely disconcerts Beckmesser, an aspirant for her hand. Walther is now introduced as a candidate for the degree of master. Kothner instructs him in the rules and appoints Beckmesser marker. The marker was a critic whose business it was to note every offence against the rules. Beckmesser conceals himself in the marker's booth, and Walther, having announced love as his theme, sings his song, which is entirely incorrect according to the laws of the guild, but in which Hans Sachs at once discovers the force of a new genius. In spite of his appeals the youth is declared, according to the formula, "outsung," and the meeting dissolves in confusion, Walther vainly endeavouring to make himself heard, Sachs pleading for him, the other masters objecting, Beckmesser scolding and pointing out more faults, and Pogner deeply troubled lest his daughter's already engaged affections make it impossible for him to carry out his plan.

The second act shows us the street, on one side of which is the house of Pogner and on the other that of Hans Sachs. Pogner brings his daughter home, still troubled in his mind and striving to fathom hers. When he has gone into the house, Magdalena, Eva's companion, tells her of Walther's failure, and she determines to ask Sachs for advice. Presently the shoemaker seats himself at his work in the door of his house. The balmy air of the evening, the scent of the elder tree, turn his thoughts to the poetry which he heard at the trial. What though it outraged the rules of the masters and even puzzled him? Within it lay a real power. The singer sang, not to meet rules, but because utterance was demanded by his feelings. Let the masters rage; Hans Sachs is well pleased. This is the substance of the famous monologue of the second act.