The troubadours must not be confounded with the _jougleurs_
(more commonly written _jongleurs_). The latter, wandering,
mendicant musicians, ready to play the lute, sing, dance, or
"juggle," were welcomed as merry-makers at all rich houses,
and it soon became a custom for rich nobles to have a number
of them at their courts. The troubadour was a very different
person, generally a noble who wrote poems, set them to music,
and employed _jongleurs_ to sing and play them. In the South
these songs were generally of an amorous nature, while in the
North they took the form of _chansons de geste_, long poems
recounting the feats in the life and battles of some hero,
such as Roland (whose song was chanted by the troops of William
the Conqueror), or Charles Martel.
And so the foundations for many forms of modern music were
laid by the troubadours, for the _chanson_ or song was always
a narrative. If it were an evening song it was a _sera_ or
serenade, or if it were a night song, _nocturne_; a dance,
a _ballada_; a round dance, a _rounde_ or _rondo_; a country
love song, a _pastorella_. Even the words descant and treble
go back to their time; for the _jongleurs_, singing their
masters' songs, would not all follow the same melody; one
of them would seek to embellish it and sing something quite
different that still would fit well with the original melody,
just as nowadays, in small amateur bands we often hear a
flute player adding embellishing notes to his part. Soon,
more than one singer added to his part, and the new voice was
called the triple, third, or treble voice. This extemporizing
on the part of the _jongleurs_ soon had to be regulated, and
the actual notes written down to avoid confusion. Thus this
habit of singing merged into _faux bourdon_, which has been
discussed in a former chapter. Apart from these forms of song,
there were some called _sirventes_--that is "songs of service,"
which were very partisan, and were accompanied by drums, bells,
and pipes, and sometimes by trumpets. The more warlike of these
songs were sung at tournaments by the _jongleurs_ outside the
lists, while their masters, the troubadours, were doing battle,
of which custom a good description is to be found in Hagen's
book on the minnesingers.
In France the Provencal poetry lasted only until the middle
of the fourteenth century, after the troubadours had received
a crushing blow at the time the Albigenses were extirpated in
the thirteenth century.
In one city alone (that of Beziers), between 30,000 and 40,000
people were killed for heresy against the Pope. The motto
of the Pope's representatives was "God will know His Own,"
and Catholics as well as Albigenses (as the sect was called)
were massacred indiscriminately. That this heresy against
the Pope was vastly aided by the troubadours, is hardly open
to doubt. Such was their power that the rebellious, antipapal
_sirventes_ of the troubadours (which were sung by their troops
of _jongleurs_ in every market place) could be suppressed only
after the cities of Provence were almost entirely annihilated
and the population destroyed by the massacre, burning alive,
and the Inquisition.
A review of the poems of Bertran de Born, Bernart de Ventadour,
Thibaut, or others is hardly in place here. Therefore we
will pass to Germany, where the spirit of the troubadours was
assimilated in a peculiarly Germanic fashion by the minnesingers
and the mastersingers.
In Germany, the troubadours became minnesingers, or singers of
love songs, and as early as the middle of the twelfth century
the minnesingers were already a powerful factor in the life
of the epoch, counting among their number many great nobles
and kings. The German minnesingers differed from the French
troubadours in that they themselves accompanied their songs on
the viol, instead of employing _jongleurs_. Their poems, written
in the Swabian dialect, then the court language of Germany,
were characterized by greater pathos and purity than those of
the troubadours, and their longer poems, corresponding to the
_chansons de geste_ of the north of France, were also superior
to the latter in point of dignity and strength. From the French
we have the "Song of Roland" (which William the Conqueror's
troops sang in their invasion of England); from the Germans the
"Nibelungen Song," besides Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival"
and Gottfried von Strasburg's "Tristan." In contradistinction
to the poetry of the troubadours, that of the minnesingers
was characterized by an undercurrent of sadness which seems
to be peculiar to the Germanic race. The songs are full of
nature and the eternal strife between Winter and Summer and
their prototypes Death and Life (recalling the ancient myths
of Maneros, Bacchus, Astoreth, Bel, etc.).
After the death of Konrad IV, the last Swabian emperor of the
House of Hohenstaufen, minnesinging in Germany declined, and
was succeeded by the movement represented by the _meister_ or
mastersingers. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when Germany was broken up into countless small duchies and
kingdoms, many of the German nobles became mere robbers and took
part in the innumerable little wars which kept the nation in
a state of ferment. Thus they had neither time nor inclination
to occupy themselves with such pursuits as poetry or music. In
the meanwhile, however, the incessant warfare and brigandage
that prevailed in the country tended to drive the population
to the cities for protection. The latter grew in size, and
little by little the tradespeople began to take up the arts
of poetry and music which had been discarded by the nobles.
Following their custom in respect to their trades, they formed
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.