Critical and Historical Essays
the art companies into guilds, the rules for admittance to which
were very strict. The rank of each member was determined by
his skill in applying the rules of the "Tabulatur," as it was
called. There were five grades of membership: the lowest was
that of mere admittance to the guild; the next carried with
it the title of scholar; the third the friend of the school;
after that came the singer, the poet; and last of all the
mastersinger, to attain which distinction the aspirant must
have invented a new style of melody or rhyme. The details of
the contest we all know from Wagner's comedy; in a number of
cases Wagner even made use of the sentences and words found
in the rules of the mastersingers. Although the mastersingers
retained their guild privileges in different parts of Germany
almost up to the middle of the present century, the movement
was strongest in Bavaria, with Nuremberg as its centre.
Thus we see that the mastersingers and the minnesingers were
two very different classes of men. The mastersingers are
mainly valuable for having given Wagner a pretext for his
wonderful music. Hans Sachs was perhaps the only one of the
mastersingers whose melodies show anything but the flattest
mediocrity. The minnesingers and their immediate predecessors
and successors, on the other hand, furnished thought for a great
part of our modern art. To put it in a broad manner, it may be
said that much of our modern poetry owes more than is generally
conceded to the German mediaeval romance as represented in the
works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasburg, and
the unknown compilers of the "Nibelungenlied" and "Gutrune."
Music owes more to the troubadours, for, from what we know
of the melodies of the minnesingers, they cannot compare in
expressiveness with those of their French _confreres_.
In closing this consideration of the minnesingers, I will quote
some of their verses and melodies, giving short accounts of
the authors.
The best known of the minnesingers were Walther von der
Vogelweide, Heinrich Frauenlob, Tannhaeuser, Nithart, Toggenburg,
etc. We first hear of Walther von der Vogelweide in 1200,
as a poet attached to the court of Philip of Hohenstaufen,
the German Kaiser, and shortly after to that of his successors
Otto and Friedrich. He accompanied Kaiser Friedrich to the
Crusade of 1228, and saw him crowned in Jerusalem. He died
in Wuerzburg, Bavaria. In accordance with his dying request,
food and drink for the birds were placed on his tomb every day;
the four holes carved for that purpose being still visible. The
pictures in Hagen's work on the mastersingers were collected in
the fifteenth century by Manasses of Zorich, and have served
as the basis for all subsequent works on the subject. The
picture of Von der Vogelweide (page 21) shows him sitting in
an attitude of meditation, on a green hillock, beside him his
sword and his coat of arms (a caged bird on one side and his
helmet on the other), and in his hand a roll of manuscript.
One of his shorter poems begins:
Neath the lindens
In the meadow
Seek I flowers sweet;
Clover fragrant,
Tender grasses,
Bend beneath my feet.
See, the gloaming,
Softly sinking,
Covers hill and dale.
Hush! my lover--
Tandaradei!
Sweet sings the nightingale.
We all are familiar with Tannhaeuser (plate 35), through Wagner's
opera; therefore it is unnecessary to say more than that he was
a real person, a minnesinger, and that the singing tournament
at the Wartburg (the castle of the Thueringen family) really took
place in 1206-07. This tournament, which Wagner introduces into
his "Tannhaeuser," was a trial of knightly strength, poetry,
and music, between the courts of Babenhausen and Thueringen,
and was held in Erfurt. Among the knights who competed were
Klingsor of Hungary, a descendant of the Klingsor who figures
in the "Parzival" legend, Tannhaeuser, Walther von Eschenbach,
Walther von der Vogelweide, and many others. Tannhaeuser was
a follower, or perhaps better, the successor of Walther von
der Vogelweide, like him, a crusader, and lived in the first
half of the thirteenth century. Toggenburg and Frauenlob were
both celebrated minnesingers, the former (plate 7) being the
subject of many strange legends. The simplicity and melodious
charm of his verses seem to contradict the savage brutality
ascribed to him in the stories of his life.
Frauenlob (plate 44), as Heinrich von Meissen was
called, represents the minnesingers at the height of their
development. He died about 1320, and his works, as his nickname
suggests, were imbued with _das ewig weibliche_ in its best
sense. He was called the Magister of the seven free arts, and
was given the position of Canon of the Cathedral of Mayence,
with the title of Doctor of Divinity. He also wrote a paraphrase
on the "Song of Solomon," turning it into a rhapsodical eulogy
of the Virgin Mary, carrying versification to what seemed then
its utmost limits. The picture shows him playing and singing
to some prince, the carpet on which he stands being lifted
by the attendants. It makes plain the difference between the
minnesingers and the troubadours. In this picture the singer
is seen to be accompanying himself before the king, whereas in
plate 28 we see two troubadours in the lists, their _jongleurs_
playing or singing the songs of their masters, while the latter
engage each other in battle. In order to give one more example
we will take the pictures of Conrad, the son of Conrad IV,
and the last of the Hohenstaufens (plate 11). He was born
about 1250, and was beheaded in the market place at Naples in
1268. The story of Konradin, as he was called, is familiar;
how he lived with his mother at the castle of her brother,
Ludwig of Bavaria, how he was induced to join in a rebellion
of the two Sicilies (to the crown of which he was heir) against
France, his defeat and execution by the Duke of Anjou, himself
a well-known troubadour. The text accompanying his picture
in Hagen's work describes him as having black eyes and blonde
hair, and wearing a long green dress with a golden collar.
His gray hunting horse is covered with a crimson mantle, has a
golden saddle and bit, and scarlet reins. Konradin wears white
hunting gloves and a three-cornered king's crown. Above the
picture are the arms of the kingdom of Jerusalem (a golden
crown in silver ground), to which he was heir through his
grandmother, Iolanthe. One of his songs runs as follows, and
it may be accepted as a fair specimen of the style of lyric
written by the minnesingers:
The lovely flowers and verdure sweet
That gentle May doth slip
Have been imprisoned cruelly
In Winter's iron grip;
But May smiles o'er the green clad fields
That seemed anon so sad,
And all the world is glad.
No joy to me the Summer brings
With all its bright long days.
My thoughts are of a maiden fair
Who mocks my pleading gaze;
She passes me in haughty mood,
Denies me aught but scorn,
And makes my life forlorn.
Yet should I turn my love from her,
For aye my love were gone.
I'd gladly die could I forget
The love that haunts my song.
So, lonely, joyless, live I on,
For love my prayer denies,
And, childlike, mocks my sighs.
The music of these minnesingers existing in manuscript has been
but little heeded, and only lately has an attempt been made to
classify and translate it into modern notation. The result so
far attained has been unsatisfactory, for the rhythms are all
given as spondaic. This seems a very improbable solution of
the mystery that must inevitably enshroud the musical notation
of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.
Nithart (plate 36), by whom a number of melodies or "tones"
are given in Hagen's book (page 845), has been dubbed the
second "Till Eulenspiegel." He was a Bavarian, and lived about
1230, at the court of Frederick of Austria. He was eminently
the poet and singer of the peasants, with whom, after the
manner of Eulenspiegel, he had many quarrels, one of which is
evidently the subject of the picture. His music, or melodies,
and the verses which went with them, form the most complete
authentic collection of mediaeval music known. In considering
the _minnelieder_ of the Germans it is very interesting to
compare them with the songs of the troubadours, and to note
how in the latter the Arab influence has increased the number
of curved lines, or arabesques, whereas the German songs may
be likened to straight lines, a characteristic which we know
is a peculiarity of their folk song.
PASTORELLA BY THIBAUT II, KING OF NAVARRE, 1254.
[Figure 41]
[W: L'Autrier par la matinee Entre sen bos et un Vergier
Une pastore ai trounee chantant pour soi en voisier.]
Example from NITHART
[Figure 42]
In speaking of the straight lines of the melodies of
the minnesingers and in comparing them with the tinge of
orientalism to be found in those of the troubadours, it was
said that music owes more to the latter than to the former,
and this is true. If we admit that the straight line of Grecian
architecture is perfect, so must we also admit that mankind is
imperfect. We are living beings, and as such are swayed to a
great extent by our emotions. To the straight line of purity
in art the tinge of orientalism, the curved line of emotion,
brings the flush of life, and the result is something which we
can _feel_ as well as worship from afar. Music is a language,
and to mankind it serves as a medium for saying something which
cannot be put into mere words. Therefore, it must contain the
human element of mere sensuousness in order to be intelligible.
This is why the music of the troubadours, although not so pure
in style as that of the minnesingers, has been of the greatest
value in the development of our art. This orientalism, however,
must not mask the straight line; it must be the means of lending
more force, tenderness, or what not, to the figure. It must
be what the poem is to the picture, the perfume to the flower;
it must help to illustrate the thing itself. The moment we find
this orientalism (and I am using the word in its broadest sense)
covering, and thus distorting the straight line of pure music,
then we have national music so-called, a music which derives
its name and fame from the clothes it wears and not from that
strange language of the soul, the "why" of which no man has
ever discovered.
XIII
EARLY INSTRUMENTAL FORMS
Referring to some newspaper reports which he knew to be
without foundation, Bismarck once said, "Newspapers are simply
a union of printer's ink and paper." Omitting the implied slur
we might say the same of printed music and printed criticism;
therefore, in considering printed music we must, first of all,
remember that it is the letter of the law which kills. We must
look deeper, and be able to translate sounds back into the
emotions which caused them. There is no right or wrong way
to give utterance to music. There is but _one_ way, namely,
through the living, vital expression of the content of the
music; all else is not music but mere pleasure for the ear,
a thing of the senses. For the time being we must see through
the composer's eyes and hear through his ears. In other words,
we must think in his language. The process of creating music is
often, to a great extent, beyond the control of the composer,
just as is the case with the novelist and his characters. The
language through which musical thought is expressed, however, is
a different thing, and it is this process of developing musical
speech until it has become capable of saying for us that which,
in our spoken language, must ever remain unsaid, that I shall