MINNEGESANG. — From Old German Minne = love, and Gesang = song; a monodic lyric tradition that flourished in the German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria) from the 12th to the 15th century, at first displaying characteristics akin to those of French troubadour art, whose influence it experienced in its origins, and subsequently developing forms and characteristics of its own.
Despite its original dependence on French poetry and music, the characteristic features of this Germanic art may be briefly summarized as follows. The poetic text is more narrative and devotional, whereas in France the poems are more lyrical and amorous; here religious songs abound, especially those dedicated to the Madonna.
As regards the musical aspect, while a copious popular vein also flows through troubadour melodies, those of the Minnesänger derive their inspiration, melodic movement, and modes directly from the Gregorian repertory, whose influence they vividly reflect, whether occasionally in rhythm or in other features (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, “saying”) is a composition of a didactic and moralizing character; the Lied follows the pattern known as Barform, consisting of two sections: a) Aufgesang, composed of two Stollen (stanzas); b) Abgesang. This a a b pattern, which may be connected with the tripartite “strophe-antistrophe-epode” of ancient Greece, corresponds to the pattern of the ballade of the French trouvères, the chanson of the troubadours, and the Italian ballata (two piedi and volta). Only the first stanza was set to music; for the second, the music of the first was repeated, while the envoy had a new melody. Musically, one also notes the absence of songs with refrains (of the type of the French virelai and rondeaux) and the notably frequent use of the interval of a third. The range is sometimes very extensive: (cf. the melody with the range 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 notation (as in the manuscripts of Colmar, Donaueschingen, etc., of the 15th–16th centuries). As for rhythm, theories are still numerous. Molitor, Ursprung, Wolf, Cesari, and others defend free rhythm, similar to that of Gregorian chant; Riemann devised a theory he called Vierhebigkeit (“fourfold elevation,” the theory of four accents), too closely tied to the poetic text and shown to be unsuitable when the melody changes from syllabic to florid and melismatic (this theory was later taken up by Liuzzi in his transcription of the laudari); Ludwig accepts the modal theory for melodies of French origin, whereas Moser supports binary rhythm and rejects modal rhythm, which nevertheless finds a tenacious advocate in F. Gemrich. As with troubadour songs, instruments were also used with the songs of the Minnesänger: they accompanied the voice, alternated with it, or performed solo parts; they were for the most part stringed instruments (harp, fiddle, etc.). In the song known as the Tagelied (the equivalent of the French aube or aubade), the instrument is called Wächter and is generally a wind instrument (for example, a small trumpet). As for content, the poems are amorous, didactic, religious, moral, satirical, May songs, dance songs, etc. The religious genre, which is exceptionally rich, includes, besides the beautiful praises of the Virgin, the crusade songs (Kreuzlieder or Palästinlieder) and songs recalling the Passion and the Way of the Cross (Kreuzzug, Kreuzfahrt).
The principal Minnesänger of the 12th century, in the phase that may be called preparatory (1150–90), during which French influence was still strong, are Dietmar von Eist, Heinrich von Weldecke (a Belgian), Friedrich von Husen (d. 1190), who sang beautiful songs to troubadour melodies by 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 period of the M. (1190–1230), we find Reinmar der Alte and his great pupil Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1167–1230), who towers above all the others also in literary artistry. A famous song by him, composed for the Fifth Crusade (1228), is preserved (in a fragment at Münster): “Nu alerst leb'ich mir werde.” Another great artist who may be placed beside him for the beauty of his 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 readily sang of love and the spring awakening of nature (the characteristic Mailleder, May songs, a typical form of medieval and Renaissance monodic art, from Provence in the 11th century to Florence in the 15th); about 50 of his compositions (manuscripts in fragments at Frankfurt and Berlin) are printed in vol. XXXVII of the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (part 1). Also to be mentioned are Hartmann von der Aue, still in the 12th century, with a Kreuzlied; Konrad von Würzburg; and Tannhäuser, born near Salzburg and who perhaps took part in the Crusade of 1228, to whom the Busselied (“song of penance”) in the Jena manuscript is attributed. Decline had already begun, but the art of the M. was still splendid, and before dying out it continued to emit vivid flashes, such as the songs of Markgraf Heinrich von Meissen (Mainz, 1260–1318), called Frauenlob because he had sung of woman with the title Frau (“lady”) rather than Weib (“woman”), thereby helping to idealize the symbol of femininity which, whereas in refined French courtly lyric it remains wholly immersed in a delicate earthly sensibility, here frees itself from the senses and is often sublimated in the gentle figure of the Virgin. In the same final decades of the 13th century and at the beginning of the 14th, Witzlaw von Rügen (d. 1325) and Herrmann der Damen must also be remembered, both represented in the great Jena manuscript, while in the 14th century and the first half of the 15th there are other interesting composers, such as Heinrich von Müglin, Hermann Mönch von Salzburg (1350–1410), who wrote the first polyphonic works with German texts, 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 artistic figure, whose 86 monodic and 37 polyphonic compositions are contained in a contemporary manuscript collection, partly in Vienna and partly in Innsbruck. With these two names, the chapter of the M.’s late resurgence of brilliance also closes, and the lyric vein dies out, flowing into the movement of the Meistersinger, singer-poets who in 15th- and 16th-century Germany constituted a closed corporation, with an entire complex code of pedantic rules and regulations that could neither be transgressed nor forgotten, called the Tabulatur. After a long apprenticeship, the pupils, initiated into the secrets of the art, were subjected to rigorous examinations; once they had passed them, they proceeded through the various grades of Schüler, Schulfreund, Singer, and Dichter, and were declared Meister. The most important figures of this movement are Conrad Nachtigall, Hans Sacha, and Hans Folz, all from Nuremberg; Sebastian Wilde (from Augsburg); Adam Puschmann (from Breslau, 1532–1600); and Benedikt von Watt, from St. Gallen (ca. 1606). The basic form used in the rich musical repertory of the Meistersinger is the Barform, transmitted to them by the aristocratic Minnesänger, whose direct but sterile descendants these artisans were, although, as recent studies show, their melodies (all monophonic, written in square notation with more or less free rhythm) also contained elements derived from other movements, such as the Italian laudesi, etc. The Meistersinger movement survived, in its final and most distant offshoots, such as the school of Ulm, which died out in 1839, into the 19th century; but already in the 17th century it was
The rapid decline then began, reducing the efforts of the rare epigones to academic and affected exercises.