Minnesang

MINNESANG. - From the old German Minne = love, and Gesang = song; a monodic lyrical current that flourished in the German-speaking lands (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) from the 12th to the 15th century, at first with characteristics akin to the French troubadour art, whose influence it underwent in its origins, and later with forms and characteristics of its own.

Despite its original dependence on French poetry and music, the characteristic prerogatives of this Germanic art may be briefly summarized as follows. The poetic text is more narrative and devout, whereas in France there are more lyrical and amorous poems; here religious songs abound, especially those dedicated to the Madonna.

As for the musical part, while a copious popular vein also flows through the troubadour melodies, those of the Minnesänger draw their origin, in inspiration, course and modality, directly from the Gregorian repertoire, whose influence they feel keenly, sometimes in rhythm and sometimes in other peculiarities (repercussions of the same note, characteristics of the ecclesiastical modes, etc.). The forms are the Lied (song), the Spruch and the Leich. The latter finds its parallel in the French lai; the Spruch (literally "motto") is a composition of a didactic and moralizing character; the Lied follows the scheme known as Barform, made up of two sections: a) Aufgesang, composed of two Stollen (strophes); b) Abgesang. This scheme a a b, which can be linked to the triptych "strophe-antistrophe-epode" of ancient Greece, finds its counterpart in the scheme of the ballade of the ironcères, of the canson of the troubadours and of the Italian ballata (2 piedi and volta). Only the 1st stanza was set to music; for the 2nd the music of the 1st was repeated, while for the envoi there was a new melody. Musically one also notes the absence of songs with a refrain (of the type of the French virelais and rondeaux) and the notable frequency of the use of the interval of a third. The range is sometimes very wide: (cf. the melody with a range of D-B flat transcribed by H. Moser in his Geschichte der deutschen Musik, I, Stuttgart-Berlin 1930, p. 161). The notation is square (as in the Jena manuscript of the 14th century) or Gothic diastematic neumatic (as in the manuscripts of Colmar, Donaueschingen, etc. of the 15th-16th centuries). As for rhythm, theories are still manifold. Molitor, Ursprung, Wolf, Cesari, etc. maintain a free rhythm, similar to that of Gregorian chant; Riemann devises a theory which he calls Vierhebigkeit ("fourfold elevation", theory of the 4 accents), too closely tied to the poetic text and which proves unsuitable when the melody passes from syllabic to florid and melismatic (this theory was later taken up by Liuzzi in his transcription of the laudari); Ludwig admits the modal theory for melodies of French origin, while Moser maintains binary rhythm and rejects modal rhythm, which instead finds a tenacious champion in F. Gemrich. With the songs of the Minnesänger, as with those of the troubadours, instruments were also used, which accompanied the voice, or alternated with it, or performed soloistic parts: they were mostly string instruments (harp, fiddle, etc.). In the song known as Tagelied (the parallel of the French aube or aubade) the instrument takes the name of Wächter and is generally a wind instrument (e.g. a small trumpet). As for content, the poems are amorous, didactic, religious, moral, satirical, songs of May, dance songs, etc. In the religious genre, which is exceedingly rich, besides the most beautiful praises of the Virgin, worthy of note are the crusade songs (Kreuzlieder or Palästinlieder) and the songs evoking the Passion and the Way of the Cross (Kreuzzug, Kreuzfahrt).

The principal Minnesänger of the 12th century, in the phase that may be called one of preparation (1150-90), in which French influence is still strong, are Dietmar von Eist, Heinrich von Weldecke (Belga), Friedrich von Husen (d. 1190), who sang most beautiful songs on troubadour melodies of Guiot de Provins and Bernard de Ventadour, and Spervogel, to whom belongs the only melody known in this genre before 1200 (Jena manuscript). At the beginning of the 13th century, in what may be called the classical epoch of the M. (1190-1230), are found Reinmar der Alte, and his great pupil Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1167-1230), who towers above all the others also in literary art. Of him there is preserved (in a fragment at Münster) a famous song, composed for the Fifth Crusade (1228): "Nu alerst leb'ich mir werde". Another great artist who can well stand beside him for beauty of melodies is Neidhart von Reuenthal (ca. 1180-1240), who lived at the courts of Bavaria and Austria, a singer of dance songs and humorous lyrics, whose vein gladly sings of love and the spring awakening of nature (the characteristic Mailleder, songs of May, a typical form of medieval and Renaissance monodic art, from 11th-century Provence to 15th-century Florence); ca. 50 of his compositions (manuscripts in fragments at Frankfurt and Berlin) are printed in the XXXVII vol. of the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (1st part). Still in the 12th century, Hartmann von der Aue, with a Kreuzlied, Konrad von Würzburg, Tannhäuser, born near Salzburg and who perhaps took part in the Crusade of 1228, to whom is attributed the Busselied ("song of penance") of the Jena manuscript. The decadence had already begun, but the art of the M. was still splendid, and before dying out it still sent forth very vivid flashes, such as the songs of the Markgraf Heinrich von Meissen (Mainz, 1260-1318), called Frauenlob for having sung woman with the appellation Frau ("lady") instead of Weib ("woman"), contributing to idealize the symbol of femininity which, while in gallant French lyric it remains wholly immersed in an albeit delicate earthly sensibility, here frees itself from the senses and is often sublimated in the gentle figure of the Virgin. In the same closing years of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th one must also remember Witzlaw von Rügen (d. 1325) and Herrmann der Damen, both represented in the great Jena manuscript, while in the full 14th century and the 1st half of the 15th there are other interesting composers such as Heinrich von Müglin, Hermann Mönch von Salzburg (1350-1410), who wrote the first polyphonies with German text, the count Hugo von Montfort (d. 1423) whose Lieder were set to music by his minstrel Burk Mangolt, and finally Oswald von Wolkenstein (1367-1445), the last great figure of an artist, of whom 86 monodic and 37 polyphonic compositions are contained in a manuscript collection of the time, partly at Vienna and partly at Innsbruck. With these two names the page of the late revival of the splendor of the M. also closes, and the lyrical vein dies out, flowing into the current of the Meistersinger, singer-poets who constituted in 15th-16th-century Germany a closed guild, with a whole complex code of pedantic rules and norms which it was not lawful to transgress or forget, called the Tabulatur. After a long apprenticeship the pupils, initiated into the secrets of the art, were subjected to severe tests, having passed which, through the various grades of Schüler, Schulfreund, Singer, Dichter, they were declared Meister. The most important figures of this current are: Conrad Nachtigall, Hans Sachs, Hans Folz, all of Nuremberg; Sebastian Wilde (of Augsburg); Adam Puschmann (of Breslau 1532-1600); Benedikt von Watt, of St. Gall (ca. 1606). The basic form used in the rich musical repertoire of the Meistersinger is the Barform, handed down to them by the aristocratic Minnesänger, of whom these artisans were a direct but sterile offshoot, although, as recent studies prove, they had in their melodies (all monophonic, written in square notation with a more or less free rhythm) elements derived also from other movements, such as the Italian laudesi, etc. The current of the Meistersinger reached, in its last and most distant offshoots, such as the school of Ulm, which died out in 1839, as far as the 19th century; but already in the 17th century it was began the rapid decline that reduced the attempts of the rare epigones to academic and affected exercises.

Luisa Cervelli