Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SONG 603
and Ulm. In sliort, daring the 15th and 16th
centuries, there was scarcely a town of any
magnitude or importance throughout Germany
which had not its own Meistersinger. The
17th century was a period of decline, both in
numbers and repute. The last of these schools
of music lingered at Ulm until 1839, and then
ceased to exist ; and the last survivor of the
Meistersinger is said to have died in 1876.
Famous among Meistersinger were Hans
Rosenbliit, Till Eulenspiegel, Muscatbliit, Heinrich
von Miiglin, Puschman, Fischart, and
Seb. Brandt ; but the greatest of all by far
was Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg,
who lived from 1494 to 1576. His extant
works are 6048 in number, and fill 34 folio
volumes. 4275 of them are Meisterlieder or
Bar, as they were called.^ To Sachs's pupil,
Adam Puschman, we are indebted for accounts
of the Meistergesang.2 The works of the
Meistersinger had generally a sacred subject,
and their tone was religious. Hyrnqs were
their lyrics, and narrative poems founded on
Scripture were their epics. Sometimes, however,
they wrote didactic or epigrammatic poems.
But their productions were all aKke wanting
in grace and sensibility ; and by a too rigid
observance of their own minute and complicated
rules of composition or Tdblatv/r (as they were
termed) they constantly displayed a ridiculous
pedantry. The Meistersinger clearly adopted
(especially in lyric-song) the forms of the
Minnesinger, such as the two Stollen, and the
Aiif- and Abgesang, but without the instrumental
preludes, interludes or postludes.'
Churches were their ordinary place of practice.
At Nuremberg, for instance, their singing-school
was held in St. Katherine's church, and their
pubHo contests took place there. The proceedings
commenced with the FreMngen, in
which any one, whether a member of the school
or not, might sing whatever he chose, but no
judgments were passed on these preliminary
performances. Then followed the contest, in
which Meistersinger alone might compete.
They were limited to Scriptural subjects, and
their re]a,tive merits were adjudged by four
MerJcer or markers who sat hidden by a curtain
at a table near the altar. It was the duty of
one of the four to heed that the song faithfbUy
adhered to Holy Writ ;
of another to pay
special attention to its prosody ;
of a third to
its rhyme, and of the fourth to its melody.
Should the singer fail in any of the rules of the
TablcUur, the Merker declared him vermngen
^ The celebrated chorale
'
Wamm betr&Tjrt du dich, mein Herz.'
Traa long believed to be the wort of Hans Sachs ; but it has been
conclusively shown by BShme (' Altdeutaches Liederbuch,' p. 748)
that the words were written by G. A. Oemler, and then set to the
old secular tune, Dein gsund mein Freud.'
'
8 They bear the titles of Gribndlicher BericTit da tUntttchen
ifeieterffestmge (GOrlitz. 1571) ; and OrmtcHiaher Bericht Oer deut-
«cft«n Reim^n Oder Rtthnum (Frankfurt a. O., 1596). Both are
partialiy reprinted in the Sammlung fur alldeatsche Literatur,
edited by F. H. v. der Hageo, 3. G. BUschlng, and otheis, Braslau,
1812. See ajao Dot Singebueh des A. Pueehnuj/n nebst den (hiffinalmclodien
dct Sf. Beheam wnd ff. Btuifu, by G. MUnzer (Leipzig, 1806).
3 Ton den MeUtersiTtgem und ihrer Mtuik. Curt Mey, 1903,
and verthan, and the competitor who had the
fewest faults obtained the prize, a chain with
coins. One of the coins, bearing thfe image of
King David, had been the gift of Hans Sachs,
and hence the whole Gesdnge were called the
' David and ' the prizeman the ' Davidwinner.'
Every Davidwinner might have his apprentices,
but no charge was made for teaching. The
term Meister ' ' (strictly speaking) applied only
to those who invented a new metre or melody ;
the rest were simply ' Sanger.
The Meistersinger possessed a store of melodies
for their own use ; and these melodies were
labelled with distinctive but apparently meaningless
names, such as the blue -tone,* the
red-tone, the ape-tune, the rosemary-tune, the
yellow-Uly-tune, etc. A Meistersinger might set
his poems to any of these melodies. The four
principal were called the gekronten Tone, and
their respective authors were Miigliu, Frauenlob,
Mamer, and Regenbogen. So far were the
Meistersinger carried by their grotesque pedantry
that in setting the words of the twenty-ninth
chapter of Genesis to Miiglin's lange Ton,^ the
very name of the book and the number of the
chapter were also included. Thus :
Ex. 3.
wie Ja ' cob floh vor sein Bru-der E - sau ent • wicht
^^=f^Fl"^=a:d^p:^
er in Me - so - po • ta - mi - am kom men.
To all external appearance the melodies of
the Meistersinger (like those of the Minnesinger)
had a strong aiEnity with Church music and
kept to the Ecclesiastical modes. But on closer
scrutiny many melodies may be found which
would sound just like our major and minor
scales, were it not for their modal cadences and
the many liturgical fragments introduced. Still
their songs are for the most part poor and
simple, and too devoid of rhythm ever to be
really popular, and very few of them found
sufficient favour to become Volkslieder in the
15th and 16th centuries.' On the other hand,
the Meistersinger themselves sometimes appropriated
Volkslieder. Thus Hans Sachs has
4 With the Meistersingei- the word Ton referred to the music
only, and not to the poetry, as with the Minnesinger.
Wagner has made us familiar with Miiglin's lange Ton, in his
Meistersinger fanfare ;—
and it is evident that Wagner studied and fully understood the
Meistersinger melodies, and adopted many genuine ones.
B According to BQhme, in the preface to his
'
Altd. Liederhuch,'
p. xxiii, the writers of the Volkslieder never signed their names,
whilst the Meistersinger generally introduced his own name, and
very often the date of his composition, into the last rhyme of the
poem. A Meistersinger's Bong can thus be distinguished from a true
Volkslied.