SECULAR MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Popular music; fusion of secular and ecclesiastic spirit; Paganism
and Christianity; the epic--Folksong; early types in France,
_complainte_, narrative song, dance song; Germany and the North;
occupational songs--Vagrant musicians; jongleurs, minstrels; the love
song--Troubadours and Trouvères; Adam de la Halle--The Minnesinger;
the Meistersinger; influence on Reformation and Renaissance.
However slim the records of early church music they still suffice to
give some clews to the origin and nature of the first religious songs.
But, when we turn to the question of secular song at the beginning of
our era, we are baffled by an utter lack of tangible material. For the
same monks to whom we are indebted for the early examples of sacred
music were religious fanatics who looked with hostile eyes upon the
profane creations of their lay contemporaries. Yet we may be confident
of the continued and uninterrupted existence not only of some sort of
folk music, but also of the germs at least of an art music, however
crude, throughout that period of confusion incident to, and following,
the crumbling of the Roman empire.
We need but point to our discourse upon the music of primitive
peoples (Chap. I), the traces of musical culture left by the ancients
(Chap. II), and especially the high achievements of the Greeks
(Chap. IV), as evidence that, whatever the stage of a people’s
intellectual development, music is a prime factor of individual
and racial expression. Furthermore, at almost every period there
is recognizable the distinction between folk music proper--the
spontaneous collective expression of racial sentiment--and the more
sophisticated creations which we may designate as art. Thus the music
transmitted by the Greeks to the Romans, if added to ever so slightly,
no doubt was continued with the other forms of Greek culture. The
symposias, scolia, and lyrics of Hellas had their progeny in the odes
of Horace and Catullus; the bards, the _aœds_, and rhapsodists had
their counterpart--degenerate, if you will--in the _histriones_, the
gladiators, and performers in the arena of declining Rome. Turning to
the 'Barbarians’ who caused the empire’s fall, we learn that already
Tacitus recorded the activities of the German _bardit_ who intoned war
songs before their chiefs and inspired them to new victories; while
Athenæus and Diodorus Siculus both tell of the Celtic bards who had an
organization in the earliest Middle Ages and were regularly educated
for their profession.
I
Because of the fact that our earliest musical records are
ecclesiastical, the impression might prevail that modern music had
its origin in the Christian church. But, although almost completely
subjected to it as its guardian mother, and almost wholly occupied in
its service, the beginnings of Christian music antedate the church
itself. Pagan rites had their music no less than Christian. Just as
we find elements of Greek philosophy in the teaching of Christianity,
so the church reconciled Pagan festivals with its own holidays, and
with them adapted elements of Pagan music. Thus our Easter was a
continuation of the Pagan May-day festivals, and in the old Easter hymn
_O filii et filiæ_ we find again the old Celtic may day songs, the
_chansons de quête_ which still survive in France. We here reproduce
one above the other:
[Illustration: Music]
O fi-li-i et fi-li-æ
Rex cœ-les-tis rex glo-ri-æ.
[Illustration: Music]
En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs,
En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs.
The midwinter festival, merged into our Christmas, and the midsummer
festival, corresponding to the feast of St. John the Baptist, both
became connected with masses and songs common to both beliefs; the
_Tonus Peregrinus_, sung to the psalm 'When Israel came out of Egypt,’
already an old melody in the ninth century, is almost identical with
old French secular songs, and we have already observed the adoption of
vulgar melodies into 'sequences’ and motets.
It must be remembered that for a considerable period Christianity
and Paganism coexisted as tolerant companions. The former could not
totally blot out the traditions, customs, conventions, ideas, and myths
of classic Paganism which were rooted in the popular consciousness.
'All through the Middle Ages,’ says Symonds, 'uneasy and imperfect
memories of Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great
conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town
on fire; Virgil, the magician; Dame Venus, lingering about the hill of
Hörsel--these phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost,
remained to sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga.’[69]
Associated with these myths were the traditions native to the Celtic
and Germanic peoples. The very bards of whom we spoke are known to have
entered the service of the church in great number, though this did
not prevent their travelling from castle to castle to sing before the
princes ballads in praise of their heroic ancestors. Of these epics,
hero tales, strange stories of conquest and adventure the nations of
central Europe possessed a rich treasure, and we hear that about A.
D. 800 Charlemagne, the sovereign patron of liberal arts, ordered a
collection of them to be made.
Tolerant though he was of the traditions of his people, the profane
songs of love and satire, sometimes indecent, which were sung about
the churches, became subjects of his censure; and no doubt the trouble
they caused was but one indication of the growing antagonism between
Christian and non-Christian, the intolerance of the later Middle Ages.
Already Charles’ son, Ludwig the Pious, looked with disfavor upon the
heathen epics. As time went on and clerical influence broadened, the
personalities of Pagan tradition became associated with the spirit
of evil; Dame Venus had now become the she-devil, the seductress of
pious knights.[70] This again gave rise to new ideas, traditions, and
superstitions; the mystic and the supernatural caught hold of the
people’s fancy and were reflected in their poetry and song.
Among the earliest epics, of which the verses are extant, are fragments
such as the song on the victory of Clothar II over the Saxons in 622 A.
D. Helgaire, a historian of the ninth century, tells us that, 'thanks
to its rustic character, it ran from lip to lip; when it was sung the
women provided the chorus by clapping their hands.’ Its Latin text
is said to be merely a translation of a popular version, which would
antedate the earliest known vernacular song by over two centuries.
Of a more advanced type is the Song of Roland, that famous chronicle
of the death of the Count of Brittany in the Pass of Roncesvalles,
during Charlemagne’s return from the conquest of the Spanish march.
Its musical notation was lost, but it was sung as late as 1356 at the
battle of Poitiers. Though this great epic consists of no less than
four thousand verses, Tiersot points out that its hero had long been
celebrated in innumerable short lyrics, easy to remember, which all
the people sang. Many were the epics describing the valiant deeds of
Charlemagne himself, and posterity deified him as the hero of heroes in
numerous strains that are lost to us. But one of which the music has
been deciphered, though with varying results, is the _Planctus Karoli_,
a _complainte_ on the death of the great emperor (813 A. D.).[71] Then
there is the quaint vernacular song in praise of King Ludwig III,
celebrating his victory over the Normans (832 A. D.):
'_Einen Kuning weiz ich
Heisset Herr Ludwig
Der gerne Gott dienet
Weil er ihms lohnet_,’ etc.
('A king I know, named Lord Ludwig, who serves God gladly, for he
rewards him,’ etc.)
But with isolated exceptions like this one all the early epics were
written in Latin; even the early songs of the first crusaders (eleventh
century) are still in that language. Their origin may in many instances
have been ecclesiastical; written by some monk secluded within his
monastery walls, they may never have been sung by the people; their
melodies, akin to the plain chant of the church, may never have entered
into the popular consciousness. Yet it is in the popular consciousness
that we must look for the true origin of mediæval secular music. In
folk song itself we must seek the germs of the art which bore such rich
blossoms as the Troubadour and Minnesinger lyrics and which in turn
refreshed by its influence the music of the church itself.
II
As folk songs we are wont to designate those lyrics of simple character
which, handed down from generation to generation, are the common
property of all the people. Every nation, regardless of the degree of
its musical intelligence, possesses a stock of such songs, so natural
in their simple ingenuity as to disarm the criticism of art, whose
rules they follow unconsciously and with perfect concealment of means.
Their origin is often lost in the obscurity of tradition and we accept
them generally and without question as part and parcel of our racial
inheritance. Yet, while in a sense spontaneous, every folk song did
originate in the consciousness of some one person. The fact that we do
not know its author’s name argues simply that the song has outlived
the memory of him who created it. He was a man of the people, more
gifted than his fellows, who saw the world through a poet’s eye, but
who spoke the same language, was reared in the same traditions, and
swayed by the same passions and sentiments as they who were unable
to express such things in memorable form. This fellow, whose natural
language is music, becomes their spokesman; their heartbeats are the
accents of his song. His talent is independent of culture. A natural
facility, an introspective faculty and a certain routine suffice to
give his song the coherence and definiteness of pattern which fasten it
upon the memory. Language is the only requisite for the transmission
of his art. Once language is fixed and has become the common property
of the people, this song, vibrating the heart-strings of its makers’
countrymen, will be repeated by another who perchance will fashion
others like it; his son, if he be gifted like himself, will do likewise
and so the inexhaustible well of popular genius will flow unceasingly
from age to age.
In the sentiments and thoughts common to all, then, we will find the
impulses of the songs which we shall now discuss. Considering the
different shades of our temperament, sadness, contentment, gladness,
and exuberance, we find that each gives rise to a species of song, of
which the second is naturally the least distinctive, the two extremes
calling for the most decisive expression. Now sadness and melancholy
have their concrete causes, and it is in the narration of these
causes that the heart vents its sorrow. Hence the narrative form, the
_complainte_, whose very name would confirm our reasoning, is the
earliest form of folk song in the vulgar tongue. In a warlike people
this would naturally dwell upon warlike heroic themes, and we have
already pointed out the early origin of the epic. The musical form
of epic was perhaps the simplest of all, taking for its sole rhythm
the accent of the words, one or two short phrases, chanted much in
the manner of the plain-song, sufficing for innumerable verses. It is
notable, too, that the church, adroitly seizing upon popular music as a
power of influence, adopted this form to another genus, the _légende_,
which, though developed by clericals, struck as deep a root in the
people’s imagination. Thus we see in the ninth century the 'Chant of
St. Eulalia,’ and in the tenth the 'Life of St. Leger,’ which already
shows great advance in form, being composed in couplets of two, four,
and six verses, alternating. Possessed of better means of perpetuation
this religious epic flourished better and survived longer than the
heroic _complainte_.
Still another genus was what we might call the _popular complaintes_,
the _chansons narratives_, which dealt with the people’s own
characters, with the common causes of woe; the common soldier and the
peasant; the death of a husband or a son. Such a one is the _Chanson
de Renaud_, which is considered the classic type of popular song. It
is sung in every part of France, and its traces are found in Spain,
Italy, Sweden, and Norway. It is unquestionably of great age, though
its date cannot be fixed.
[Illustration: Music]
Quand Jean Re-naud de guer-re r’vint,
Te-nait ses tri-pes dans ses mains.
Sa mère à la fe-nêtre en haut:
“Voi-ci ve-nir mon fils Re-naud.”
This strain is sung through thirteen stanzas, recounting Renaud’s
return from the wars to his home, where mother and wife await him, only
to die upon the stroke of midnight. The mother artfully conceals the
fact from his young spouse till finally she hears the news from the
boys in the street and sees the catafalque in the church. Her grief is
expressed in two final stanzas upon this melody:
[Illustration: Music]
Re-naud, Re-naud, mon ré-con-fort,
Te voi-là donc en rang des morts!
Di-vin Re-naud mon ré-con-fort,
Te voi-là donc en rang des--morts!--
the last stanza very naïvely telling of her own death:
'She had said for him three verses; at the first she confessed,
At the second she took sacrament; at the third she expired.’
The music is notable not only for its perfect symmetry and the fidelity
with which it expresses the sentiment, but also its discriminating
use of the natural and flatted B to produce a plaintive effect. (To
both the employment of 'modern’ tonality and the chromatic element in
popular song we shall have occasion to return.) The 6/8 rhythm is no
less remarkable, giving the piece a crispness and definiteness never
attained by mediæval church music.
Parallel to the narrative song there developed a lighter genre, as old
as the _complainte_ itself, which corresponds to comedy as the latter
does to tragedy. Its personages are the same, but stripped of all their
sombre aspect; its story has a happy conclusion; its subject is not
infrequently comic and satirical. Tiersot quotes, in contrast to the
_Chanson de Renaud_, an example which is still heard in the provinces
of France.[72] Like the song already quoted, it narrates the return of
soldiers from the war, but, where the first has the mark of death upon
him, the other returns with a 'rose between his lips.’ It is perhaps
not so old as the _Chanson de Renaud_, but equally characteristic and
particularly 'Gallic’ in flavor:
[Illustration: Music]
Trois jeun’ tam-bours
S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re,
Trois jeun’ tam-bours
S’en re-ve-nant de guerre,
Et ri et ran, ran pe-ta-plan,
S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re.
Note the crisp rhythm, the decided major tonality, and the
exuberant spirit of the song. Many early melodies show these same
characteristics, which at once remind us of that other elemental form
of folk music--the dance song, in which rhythm is the essential element.
Rhythm is the feature which most of all distinguishes popular song,
and secular music in general, from church music. It is the essentially
emotional quality of music which the Christian church carefully
excluded from its chant. We have seen, however, how people’s primitive
instinct causes them to mark the rhythm of a melody (Chap. I) and
beheld the women clapping their hands to the tune of the _complainte_
of Clothar II. Dependent upon simple formulas which could be easily
grasped and remembered, folk song naturally chose the simplest rhythmic
and melodic types. Hence the dance became one of the principal
root-stocks of secular music. An element which was never admitted into
the narrative form, the refrain, is a distinguishing characteristic of
the dance song, and in it we see the germ of the earliest of our modern
instrumental forms, the _rondeau_, originally the name of a dance. The
dance song was perhaps the most varied in melodies, for the wayfaring
musicians of the Middle Ages carried them from village to village and
from country to country, so that there was a continuous international
exchange.
The rhythmic nature of folk song carries us into another field of
speculation, namely, the influence of the people’s daily occupations,
the close relation between daily life and song in ages when life in
its individual and social manifestations could be reduced to simple
formulæ. Occupational songs have from earliest times (cf. Chap.
IV) been an important factor in folk music, and it is obvious that
early in the Middle Ages such songs were closely associated with the
movements of the human body in various occupations. Dr. Bücher[73]
calls attention to the fact that the blacksmith at his anvil, the navvy
in the street, are striking iambi, trochees, spondees, dactyls, and
anapests. He has collected an enormous amount of folk songs that were
sung by the woodman as he wielded his axe, by the boatman plying his
oars, by the peasant as he plowed his acre, scattered the seed, mowed
the field, and reaped the harvest. This, however, pertains particularly
to Germany, where Bücher’s investigations were chiefly carried on, and
whither we must now direct the reader’s attention.
To trace and formulate distinctions between the folk songs of the
northern and southern nations is a hazardous undertaking, since the
Celtic element which so largely determines the music of Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales is also present in France and Spain, and since the
wars between the various races, as well as the great international
movements of the Crusades, tended to modify national distinctions. All
these meetings and collisions between the different nations have left
traces in the songs of the individual peoples. However, northern folk
song may in general be said to be simpler and more regular in outline
and striving for greater continuity of design or pattern than southern.
Rhythm is simpler, firmer, and less given to eccentricities. The
tonality is usually clearer and minor scales seem to predominate. In
the dance songs the passionate and boisterous element, characteristic
of the dances of the Slavic and Latin races, is lacking.
The folk song of Northern Europe draws largely upon the stock of topics
held in common. Ever since Johann Gottfried Herder, in his _Stimmen
der Völker in Liedern_ ('The Voices of the Peoples in Song’), called
attention to the treasures of folk song, the patient research of
painstaking scholars has brought forth proof upon proof to show how
closely the nations of the North are related, in spite of political
boundary lines and other barriers. The recurrence of the same saga or
story of ancient myth or hero-lore in Scandinavian song and in German,
the resemblance between the German Tannhäuser, the Swedish knight Olaf,
the Scottish Thomas the Rhymer, and the Flemish Heer Daniel or Heer
Halewyn, make the question of priority seem irrelevant. North and south
of the Channel, and even east and west of the Rhine, the contents of
legendary song are curiously alike.
In manner, too, northern folk songs have many features in common;
an instinctive simplicity of language, a freedom from obscurities
and far-fetched allusions, the prevalence of a four-line strophe and
alliteration and assonance which only in time yield to rhyme. The
singing of the same tune to an indefinite number of lines or stanzas
is common to Celtic bards, Norse skalds, and German singers, and
links them to their forerunners in classical antiquity, the Greek
rhapsodists. In following the outline of the poem, the melody is
usually cast in lines, each closing with a cadence or 'fall’; the lines
form groups or couplets, either similar or dissimilar, in the manner of
rhyming verse-lines. The first couple of phrases is repeated to give
the structure stability; the middle portion forms the contrast, either
by being broken up into shorter lengths or founded upon different
notes of the scale. The dominant in the middle cadence is of frequent
occurrence. The rhythm is simple.
Impressionable and receptive by nature, the German people have always
been given to imitation of foreign models and there is no doubt that
the international movements during the Crusades and the visits of
wandering minstrels of foreign birth introduced alien elements and
obliterated some of the original features of German folk song. The
pathetic rise of a tune through the fifth to the minor seventh suggests
Scandinavian influence; the alternation of major and relative minor
may be traced to the same source. Still the German Volkslied has
some traits that distinguish it from the folk song of other northern
nations. It is more firmly knit, more formal, and less emotional.
Unlike English song, which favors a repetition of short phrases, a
single figure which, repeated on different degrees of the scale,
sometimes makes up the whole tune, German folk song repeats short
phrases only to establish balance after contrast or to make the
essential parts of the structure correspond. There is a marked tendency
to make the formal climax coincide with the emotional, but in this
respect the _Volkslied_ does not reach the admirable symmetry of the
Irish folk song. A distinctive form is the '_Jodel_’ or '_Jodler_’
of the mountaineers of Germany, the Tyrol, and Switzerland. Based
upon broken chords or arpeggios, it suggests, as do some other folk
songs built upon a harmonic foundation, that the German people had an
innate sense for diatonic harmony long before harmony as such became
an element of musical composition.[74] With the exception of the
_Jodler_, which is unique for its exuberance of spirit, the _Volkslied_
is rather reserved and contained in manner. It reflects the serious,
contemplative character and the healthy, well-poised temperament of a
physically and spiritually strong race.
Song and dance entered largely into the life of mediæval German
villages and towns. When village communities depended upon their own
resources for work and play, every village had its own musicians. The
peasant boys usually played the fiddle, the shepherds the _Schalmey_,
while the flute was hardly less popular. In the towns there were
several functionaries identified with certain forms of song. The
watchman on the town wall (_Türmer_) was blowing a tune on his horn;
the 'wait’ or _Nachtwächter_ admonished the people to observe the
curfew hour and repair for the night; and, when the _Postillon_ or
courier came through the gates with clatter of hoofs and cracking of
whips, the rousing notes of his horn brought young and old into the
street to greet the bringer of news. The smallest community had its
'town piper.’ There was no festivity without song or dance, and the
instrumentalist playing for the dance was accompanied by a precentor
for the singing and a leader for the steps. The great variety of
occupations and pastimes accompanied by song and dance made for a
great variety of folk tunes. From this folk song of mediæval Germany,
dealing with the realities of life in their manifold manifestations,
one could almost reconstruct the whole life of the race, its history,
beliefs, superstitions, activities, social and domestic customs, its
intimate domestic relations and its important public functions. The
_Tage_, _Leichen_, _Tanz_, _Spruch_, _Zauber_, and _Wünschelieder_, the
harvest, spinning, soldiers’, and other trade and labor songs are a
musical commentary as illuminating to the historian as any other relics
of the past.
* * * * *
Many beautiful melodies still heard by the traveller in Brittany,
Normandy, Provence, or the rural sections of Germany, date from the
Middle Ages. Their charm and their vitality are such that they have
survived the onslaught of advancing civilization for eight centuries
or more. They take us back to the time when agriculture was the one
great pursuit of man, when in solitude song lightened his labor and
in company song cheered his rest; when every custom, ceremonial,
occupation, had its songs; when music was a solace to all alike; when
that terrible distinction between the lettered and unlettered did not
exist. 'For neither in Greece nor in the Middle Ages did it exist;
the same poetry pleased all, the prince and the burgher, the knight
and peasant.’ 'In certain Breton provinces,’ says Tiersot, 'following
an old feudal law, established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
certain revenues were paid in song. In one place the prior exacted the
tax of “nuptial song” from the newly married on the Sunday after the
wedding; in another, every new bride was obliged to perform a song
and dance, whereupon the lord would decorate the bride with a flower
bonnet, while all the women married during the year danced and sang a
song--eloquent testimony indeed of the love of music among our early
forefathers.
C. S.
III
We have had occasion to mention the vagrant musicians, that singular
adjunct to Middle-Age society, which appeared in every country of
Central Europe, in Germany as _Fahrender_, in France as _fableor_ or
_contraire_ and later as _jongleur_ or _ménétrier_, in England as
minstrel. Gustav Freytag has speculatively traced their origin back
to the Roman gladiators, actors, and performers mentioned above, a
despised race, who were, like their supposed posterity, beyond the pale
of the law. When the Germanic hordes swept away the degenerate opulence
of Rome, this class may well be supposed to have scattered among the
barbarian conquerors. As once in the arena, they now stood before the
huts of Frankish chieftains, performing their tricks and piping strange
tunes. To the populace of the Middle Ages they were welcome guests,
for they provided the one means of artistic entertainment outside the
church.
In Germany the _fahrende Sänger_ or _Spielmann_, whether a native
who had travelled in many lands or a singer of foreign birth, was
sure to find his way into the remotest huts of the countryside. He
brought with him new tunes and took with him those that he heard at
the fireside that had given him hospitality. In this way the stock of
tunes handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter was in
every generation enlarged by acquisitions from without. The minstrel
was the medium of musical exchange between the town and the country,
between the several provinces and between different nations. He was
the middleman and the teacher, through whom echoes of the songs of
Norse skalds, Welsh and Irish bards, and French and Provençal singers
reached the German people and _vice versa_. He was especially popular
in England, where numerous instances are quoted of minstrels appearing
at royal weddings and other great functions, not only individually
but in large numbers, and being so richly rewarded for their services
that the church complained because they were better paid than priests.
Individual German sovereigns also seem to have appreciated their skill
and distinguished them by marks of favor. In 1355 Emperor Charles IV
appointed one Johann der Fiedler '_rex omnium histriorum_’ for the
archbishopric of Mayence, and thirty years later another minstrel, the
piper Brachte, bore the official title _Künig der farenden Lüte_ (King
of the wayfarers).
In France, too, the vagrant appears as the original type of popular
singer. He ran from one end of the land to the other. Received and even
invited by the great lords he went from castle to castle, his head
filled with songs, or his pockets with parchments--if, indeed, he could
read. Perchance he would stop in the common of some village, play a few
stray _arpeggios_ on his viol, and, having collected an enthusiastic
audience, sing a _complainte_, the adventures of a favorite hero, or
perhaps recount the story of a celebrated crime, embellished with
horrifying details. Again he might sing a love romance, or even a
scriptural _légende_--the 'Prodigal Son’ or some other parable, the
life of a saint, or the Passion of our Lord.
With the growth of the cities and the development of the middle class
the wandering minstrel lost popularity in Germany, even among the
people. His itinerant life bred a disregard of social customs and
conventions which caused no little concern among the respectable
burghers of larger communities, and both the _Sachsenspiegel_ and the
_Schwabenspiegel_, chronicles of the thirteenth century, record the
fact that minstrels were outside the social pale and even excluded
from membership in the church. Yet these same outcasts of the
church, excluded from its sacraments, would gather the faithful in
the cathedral square and, exciting the people’s fancy with sacred
legends and miracles, would, as it were, become the self-appointed
allies of the clergy. But at last, in uncompromising opposition to
them, the resident musicians of the towns associated themselves in the
manner of guilds and monopolized the privilege of furnishing music for
public functions, being employed and paid by the city councils. The
earliest musicians’ guild of this kind was the _Nikolaibrüderschaft_
(Brotherhood of St. Nicholas), organized in Vienna in 1288. Its
management was entrusted to a high official, the _Musikantenvogt_,
later _Oberspielgraf_, who represented the highest tribunal in matters
of music. The policy of these musicians’ guilds was similar to that
of musicians’ unions of the present day. In a district covered by the
guilds only persons enrolled as paying members were allowed to play or
sing for money.
It was different in France. Here the _jongleur_, by virtue of special
circumstances, became a privileged character and enjoyed the continued
patronage of the aristocracy, for he was an all-important factor in the
musicianship of chivalry, which we shall presently discuss.
We have left out of our consideration of folk music so far
that all-important element of modern song, the mainspring of
lyricism--romantic love. In an age when man’s entire spiritual life was
dictated by religious dogma, his natural instincts, branded as profane
and unworthy, were naturally excluded from the objects of his poetic
expression. 'But the church could not completely triumph over Nature.
The fundamental human sentiments--above all, profane love--after
having for more than ten centuries been excluded from the expression
which musical science might have vouchsafed to them, now seemed to
take their revenge, to free themselves from long subjection, to let
voices hitherto condemned to silence be heard at last. By the side
of the altars where psalms were sung, where the things of the world
were condemned, the free and subtle stories of exalted love arose,
like irresistible protests of the human heart. The cult of the ideal
woman, the mother of the Saviour, the Virgin immaculate, continued; but
beside it was heard the praise of the woman of France [of Germany, of
Italy]; the subject of another sort of devotion, as exalted and often
as pure. The chivalrous qualities of the race, disciplined and refined
by Christian dogma, but rebelling against asceticism, reappeared and
reclaimed their rights with a new vivacity.’[75] This new spirit
pervaded all classes of society. The nobility, especially, now affected
a finer, more spiritual manner of life. Christian metaphysics, superior
education, and the advanced social position of women were the things
which prepared the way for chivalry, that new moral code propagated
by formal orders of knighthood. The Crusades and contact with Eastern
culture confirmed its establishment.
[Illustration: MEDIÆVAL FRENCH SCULPTURE SHOWING TROUVÈRES AND
JONGLEURS WITH INSTRUMENTS.]
With this first renaissance of the modern spirit came also the
awakening of a new appreciation of the beauties of Nature. Man began
to notice the first flowers, the song of birds, the signs of spring’s
awakening. This gave rise to a species of popular song known as the
pastoral--_pastourelle_--which was afterward adopted and cultivated
by the Troubadours, who subjected it to certain rules, respecting
the sequence of different lengths of verses, etc. Besides the
_pastourelle_, numerous other forms of love songs (we need only mention
the serenades peculiar to the south--the Basque country and Corsica
especially) are of truly popular origin.
It may not be out of place here to quote the charming love romance
in narrative form entitled _Aucassin et Nicolette_, dating from the
beginning of the thirteenth century, which had an undoubted influence
upon the music of chivalry both in France and in Germany. It comprises
twenty-one vocal pieces interspersed with twenty prose sections, which
are to be read, not sung, as the superscription _Or se dient et content
et flabloient_ indicates, in distinction from the _Or se cante_ of the
verse sections. The verse also forms part of the narrative, with the
exception of Aucassin’s song to the evening star, which is purely lyric
but of the same musical treatment as the epic songs of the piece:
[Illustration: Music]
1. E-stoi-le-te je te voi
[Illustration: Music]
2. Que la lu-ne trait a soi
(_and twelve more verses_)
[Illustration: Music]
15. Suer douce a-mi-e.
The second musical line here serves for thirteen successive text lines
with continuous rhyme--another example of this most ancient method of
cantilation.
We must now pass on to the development of the love song, which
seems to have been the special task of a gifted and celebrated race
of knighthood, the glorious post-musicians called Troubadours and
_Trouvères_ in France, and _Minnesinger_ in Germany.
IV
The Troubadours and _Trouvères_ (so called from _trobar_ or
_trouver_--to find) were, in sharp contrast to the vagrant professional
musicians, noble knights, who practised the graceful arts as gifted
amateurs, primarily in the impassioned praise of woman and for the sole
prize of her favor, with such zeal and superior intelligence that they
soon outstripped in skill their meaner colleagues, who now became their
servants. France was, it will be recalled, at this time, linguistically
divided into two sections. The _langue d’Oc_ was spoken in the south
and the _langue d’Oïl_ in the north. In the south, in Provence and
Languedoc, the so-called Troubadour movement had its inception. 'That
glorious land, endowed with all the charms of sunny skies, which
surpassed all other European provinces in culture, prosperity, and
spiritual contentment, was the cradle of this chivalry, with which are
associated supreme sensual enjoyment, a passion for splendor, and the
worship of women, thus uniting all the conditions of poetic art.’[76]
Chivalry spread rapidly beyond the limits of these provinces, however,
and across the Pyrenees, where lay the three Christian kingdoms of
Castille-León, Navarre, and Aragón. Counts, dukes, and kings extended
their patronage to this knightly poet-band and vied with each in
attaching to their courts a brilliant assemblage of singers. The counts
of Provence especially, Raimon Berengar III and his successors, the
counts of Toulouse, Anjou, and Poitou, the kings of Aragón, Castille,
and León, the margraves of Montferrat and Este, the French royal court
where Eleonore of Poitou was queen, and the court of England under
Henry II, the second husband of Queen Eleonore, provided rallying
centres. Even the sovereigns themselves were ambitious for the favor
of the Muses. The earliest Troubadour of prominence was Guillaume,
count of Poitiers (1087-1127). Contemporary with him was Robert, duke
of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, who, after returning
from the Crusade (1106), was till his death a prisoner of his brother
Henry I of England in the Castle of Cardiff, where he is said to have
attained the rank of a Welsh bard.
This remarkable and sudden flowering of lyric poetry among the
knighthood of the eleventh century, continuing for two centuries and
more the record of which stands brightly emblazoned upon the shield
of musical history, has never been satisfactorily explained. Riemann
thinks that the education of the young nobility in the monasteries
certainly had a refining influence. The familiarity with old Breton and
British literature, the legend of King Arthur’s Round Table, the old
Celtic narrative poems and romances, especially the legend of Tristan
and Yseult, which were known through old French adaptations, likewise
had an influence.
By their own testimony, however, the Provençal poets found their
immediate suggestions in folk song itself, as interpreted by the
_jongleurs_. The latter’s entire repertoire of classic and mediæval
chronicles was adopted by the Troubadours, whose own experiences in the
Crusades later caused them to substitute recent chivalric deeds for
antique subjects. The forms of the _jongleurs’_ art we find again in
the Troubadour creations, but refined in style, governed by definite
laws of poetry, more exalted in sentiment, so that, without sacrifice
of spontaneity, they have gained distinction and variety and have
become conscious works of art. As we are concerned here only with
their musical significance, which, indeed, has been generally ignored
by literary historians and underestimated by musicians, we shall have
little to say about these forms; for, great as is the variety of
their content, we fail to find parallel distinctions in their musical
settings. It should not be overlooked, however, that certain poetic
devices and ingenuities gave rise to more advanced musical forms, i.
e., the repetition of a phrase on two rhyming verses at the beginning
of a song, followed by a variant, which is the elementary form of the
_Lied_.
The so-called _vers_ gives a starting point for Troubadour lyrics.
This was the name given to a strictly normal composition in a
measure of eight syllables, with probably an amplification of the
more sporadic, uneven verse forms of the _jongleurs_. The _chanson_
is a more sophisticated form, consisting of alternating verses of
different lengths. _Girant de Borneil_ (1175-1220) is known as its
first exponent. Then we find again the familiar narrative form in the
guise of _chansons de geste_--epics recounting deeds of valor--the
_sirventes_, employed in a lover’s address to his mistress as well
as in satire (which is an early prototype of the famous _terza rima_
later adopted by Dante and Petrarch), and the _tenson_, a controversial
song in which the same subject is treated by rival poets, real and
fictitious, in alternating verses. The Breton narrative or _lai_, of
melancholy character, as represented in the 'Tristan’ legend, was also
adopted by the Troubadours; other lyrics are variously designated
as _canson_, _canzona_, _soula_ (a merry song), _romance_ (more
characteristic of the _Trouvères_), _alba_ (aubade), a morning song,
_serena_ (serenade), an evening song, and _pastourelle_, the favorite
form already mentioned, which is the richest in popular elements--dance
rhythms, refrains, etc.
The _pastourelle_ is characterized by extreme simplicity of theme. Its
characters are shepherds and shepherdesses, and it usually begins in
the narrative form, the narrator fixing the time of his adventure--the
early morn--and the scene, invariably a field, where he meets a
shepherdess 'in the shade of a bush,’ or 'at the edge of a spring.’ The
amorous dialogue which follows has a happy conclusion if the lover be a
shepherd, an unhappy one if he be a knight. The sentiments expressed in
the Troubadour pastoral are, of course, rather those of knight and lady
in the disguise of shepherds than those of real shepherds. Robin and
Marion, the usual hero and heroine of pastoral songs, are the central
personalities of a whole cycle, the origin of which is exceedingly
ancient, far behind the day of Adam de la Halle, who is perhaps the
most famous composer of pastorals. Most of the mediæval pastorals
preserved to us belong to this cycle. The famous _Robin m’aime_ is
still sung, we are told, by the peasants of northern France. It runs as
follows:
[Illustration: Music]
Robins m’ai-me,--Robins m’a;
Robins m’ a-- de-man-dé-e si m’a - ra.
The pastoral song survived the Middle Ages and was a favorite down to
the Revolution, long before which it had, however, found its way into
the aristocracy and polite society of cities and so lost the little
natural flavor which still clung to it in the days of the Troubadours.
Robin and Marion made way for Tircis and Aminta, Phyllis and Lycidas,
beribboned and bespangled counterfeits of the original article. To
illustrate how hackneyed this type of song and the plays later made
out of them had become in the time of Molière, we may quote Monsieur
Jourdain: 'Why all these shepherds? I see nothing else.’ To which the
dancing-master replies peremptorily: 'When characters speak in music
it is necessary, for the sake of realism, to make them shepherds. Song
was ever affected by shepherds; it is hardly natural that princes and
princesses should vent their passions in musical dialogue!’
Among Troubadour dance forms there should also be mentioned the _carol_
or _rondet de carol_, _retroensa_, _estampida_, and the _espringerie_
(jumping dance). Particularly notable is the _Estampida_ of Rambaut
de Vacqueiras (1180-1270), a Troubadour at the court of Montferrat,
the lover of the beautiful princess Beatrice. The story connected with
it aptly illustrates the influence of the _jongleurs_. When one day
a band of these, native of France, came to the court, they awakened
general merriment with a new _Estampida_ played on their viols. Only
Rambaut could not be roused from his melancholy, and Beatrice asked
him therefore to sing a song himself, and so regain a happier mood.
Whereupon he composed the charming dance song _Kalenda maya_ in the
manner of the _jongleurs’ estampida_:
[Illustration: ESTAMPIDA BY RAMBAUT DE VACQUEIRAS.]
Kal-len-da ma-ya
Ni fuelhs de fa-ya
Ni chans d’auzell ni flors de glaia
Non es quem pla-ya
Pros dom-na gua-ya
Tro qu’un ys-nelh mes-sat-gier a-ya
Del vos-tre bel cors quem re-tra-ya
Pla-zer no-yelh qu’ Amors m’a-tra-ya
E ja-ya
Em-tra-ya
Vas vos don-na ve- ra-ya
E cha-ya
De pla-ya
L’ge-los ans quem n’e-stra-ya.
(_5 Stanzas_)
It should be noted here that in the transcriptions of Troubadour
songs--and most of the small manuscript treasure preserved to us
still wants unfolding--there has until recently prevailed the error
to interpret them as measured music. Measured music came into use, we
have seen, with Franco of Cologne, about A. D. 1200, but, nevertheless,
many writers did not adopt it for centuries thereafter. The Troubadours
persistently followed the metre of the verse instead of fitting their
melodies into a set rhythmic scheme (and most naturally so, when we
consider that they were primarily poets); hence the square notes in
which they note their melodies are really nothing but _neumes_ on a
staff. This use has given rise to the error common to most historians,
who, in forcing the beautiful, spontaneous tunes into a straitjacket
of modern measurement, deprived them of their rhythmic and melodic
grace in a manner which did violence to the verses as well. In
considering their musical quality we must call attention to the fact
that, while devoid of the rich beauties of modern harmony, these songs,
availing themselves both of the antique modes and modern tonalities,
are able to convey nobility of sentiment, passion, and varied shades
of emotion. Breathing the 'tender grace of a day that is dead,’ they
are, in some instances, still able to charm in our noisy age, and the
influence which they have had upon the course of the art can hardly be
over-appreciated.
It has been mentioned that the Jongleurs came largely into the
service of the Troubadours. It is they who accompanied the knights in
their travels from castle to castle, providing the lighter kinds of
amusement, and the instrumental accompaniment, such as it was, on their
viols or rottas--sometimes, indeed, singing their master’s songs, with
the dissemination of which they were frequently entrusted. That they
often undertook to 'improve’ these compositions on their own account
we gather from the words of Peire d’Auvergne and others, entreating
jongleurs not to meddle with their verses and melodies. Sometimes,
no doubt, they were more gifted than the Troubadour and provided the
melody for his verses as well. In some instances, indeed, a Jongleur
became a Troubadour or Trouvère, and sometimes a Troubadour became a
Jongleur, as in the case of Gaucelm Faidit, who lost money at dice
and was forced to earn a livelihood by his art. For that was the real
distinction between the two; one sang for glory, the other for gain. As
long as they did not make a trade of their art, lowly-born and bastards
took equal rank with princes and nobles, in the earlier periods at
least.
While at first the Troubadour disdained to accompany his own singing,
he soon learned the art from the Jongleur and in many cases became his
own accompanist. His favorite instruments were the viol, the rotta (a
form of fiddle), and the organistrum.[77] The quality of the melodies
or chords he wrested from them can hardly be conjectured, for we must
not forget that of polyphony, still in its incipient stages among the
learned musicians of the church, he had no knowledge--not, at least,
until about the time of Adam de la Halle (1240-1287), who forms the
bridge, as it were, from the Trouvères to the scientific musicians of
the Netherland school.
We must now briefly enumerate a few of the illustrious Provençal
Troubadours. There were about four hundred poets of fame. The list
is headed by Guillaume, count of Poitiers. Soon after him comes the
fiery and poetic Bernard de Ventadour (1140-1195), patronized by
Queen Eleanor; and Macabrun, the foundling, who wrote--between 1150
and 1195--in a most involved style and generally a satirical vein.
Then comes Jaufre Rudel, prince of Blaya (1140-1170), famous for his
languishing love-songs; Peire d’Auvergne (1152-1215) the 'master of
the Troubadours,’ renowned for artistic finish; Guillem de Cabestanh
(1181-1196), whose poetic adulation of his lady cost him his life at
the hand of her jealous husband, while the object of his affection
was forced to eat his heart; Peire Vidal (1175-1215), perhaps the
most celebrated of all the Troubadours; Bertrand de Born (1180-1195),
famous for his war songs; Folquet de Marseilles (1180-1231), Bishop of
Toulouse; Rambaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207), the cynical and caustic
'Monk of Montaudon’ (1180-1200); Arnault Daniel (1180-1200), a
nobleman of Perigord, celebrated by Petrarch and Dante; Gaucelm Faidit
(1190-1240); Savarie de Mauleon (1200-1230), who fought with Raymond
of Toulouse against Simon de Montfort; Peire Cardinal (1210-1230); and
Guirant Riquier (1250-1294), the last true Troubadour.
Among the women-of whom seventeen achieved great reputation--the
foremost was Beatrice, countess of Die and wife of Guillaume de
Poitiers.
The crushing out of the Troubadours is ascribed to the Albigensian
crusade, which lasted from 1207 to 1244. The Albigenses’ home was
in the very heart of the Troubadour country and the legate of Pope
Innocent III, sent as inquisitor, was murdered there during his attempt
to extirpate the heresy. The crusade of revenge which followed was
particularly directed against Count Raymond of Toulouse, staunch patron
of the Troubadours, who flocked to his standard and raised their voices
in songs of war and religious controversy. Their _odes_, _pasquinades_,
and _sirventes_ were sung by their Jongleurs in market places and at
fairs, while they themselves girt on their swords and fought. During a
fierce war of twenty years waves of soldiers and clergy swept through
the lonely vineyards and gardens, leaving only blackened ruin in
their wake. The bright days of the Troubadour were ended; the society
that supported him was crushed, and the blow that fell in Provence
reverberated through all the land. The race was not extinct, however;
its representatives found a welcome at the courts of Castille, of
Aragón, and of Sicily, where Frederick II was king. From this last
centre they unquestionably exerted an important influence upon the
Italian Renaissance, to which we shall recur in a later chapter. In
this connection we may mention the interesting fact that the poet Dante
early in the fourteenth century visited the Troubadours in their home
and drew inspiration from their art.
The Trouvères’ ascendancy dates from about 1137, when Eleonore of
Aquitaine became queen of France. At her court the knights who spoke
the _langue d’Oïl_ came in contact with those of the south, and from
them received their poetic impulse. Besides this linguistic difference,
the only other distinction is the somewhat more earnest character of
Trouvère songs. Among their illustrious representatives we must name,
first, King Richard I (1169-1199) of England (_Cœur-de-Lion_) and his
_ménéstrel_ Blondel de Nesle. Then there are Marie de France, at the
court of Henry II of England; Thibaut IV, count of Champagne, afterward
king of Navarre (1208-1253); Raoul de Coucy (end of the twelfth
century); Perrin d’Angecourt; Audefroi le Bastard; Guyot de Dijon;
Jehan de Bretal; and Adam de la Halle (or _de la Hâle_)[78] surnamed
_le bossu d’Arras_ (the hunchback of Arras), whose works are preserved
to us and are published by Coussemaker in modern notation.[79] That he
was a genuinely inspired poet and composer is eloquently attested by
his _chansons_, _rondeaux_, and motets, in which he also displays a
complete mastery of the musical science of his day. The most important
of his works is the pastoral comedy, _Le geu de Robin et de Marion_,
which he arranged at the command of the king of Naples, about the
year 1285. Very little of the music was his own, most of it was taken
from the stock of popular song. As a wanderer over Europe, a man of
free, wild life who yet had undergone strict musical training in the
monasteries of northern France, he is interesting as showing the
contrast of theoretical and of actual music and the first efforts to
combine the one with the other.
* * * * *
It is difficult, if not impossible, to say just how much the
Troubadours and the Trouvères influenced the development of music. The
Troubadours found a footing in Sicily and southern Italy and influenced
the growth of the so-called _Ars Nova_, which will be treated in the
next chapter. Melodies of the Trouvères were adopted by the Netherland
composers as the foundations of their masses. These are definite points
at which secular and religious music certainly touched. If, beyond
this, the relations between them are vague and hard to trace, the
movements of which the Troubadours and the Trouvères are manifestations
are none the less of vital significance in the history of music.
Through them the undercurrent of real free music, which we may be sure
never ceased to flow even when the crushing weight of scholasticism
was heaviest, welled to the surface. They represent spontaneous joy
and human delight in ages fettered with theology and logic. They
represent the real source of music. Those who would believe that the
great Italian Renaissance was not primarily a return to classicism but
an all-powerful and general awakening of man to the beauty and delight
of earth will find in the music of the Troubadours and Trouvères this
natural delight expressed. If, as it happened, music was the last to
rise up in the freedom of the Renaissance, it was because music got
no help in her need of expression from a study of the music of the
ancients; music had to build slowly her own means, unaided by precedent
and past accomplishment, fed and encouraged only by the natural love of
man’s heart to sing, a love which is here attested in the dark ages and
to which she finally turned.
VI
We must again give our attention to Germany, where a musical
development parallel to that of the Provençal and French chivalry
had been going forward since the twelfth century. Art music as such
had so far been confined in Germany to the church; the composers and
scholars devoted to its practice were to be found largely in the
monasteries. But about the beginning of the twelfth century an attempt
was made by poet-singers of noble birth to found a school of secular
song expressing their ideals of life and appealing to people of their
rank. This conscious effort of aristocratic singers shared with the
unconscious achievement of folk song a certain range of topics, notably
historical and sacred, and a certain naïveté of attitude. In other
respects it differed from it radically, both in content and in manner,
for it was founded upon the ideal of chivalry and was full of the
spirit of gallantry. But, while the southern poet-singers made profane
love their one great theme, German chivalric poetry in a curious way
blended the mediæval adoration of the Virgin Mary with the worship of
women in general. From this devotion to _Fru Minne_ (Dame Love) it was
called _Minnegesang_ and its singers _Minnesinger_. The beauties of
Nature, ever present in German poetry, also formed an important subject
in _Minnegesang_.
Though simple enough in itself, this first art song of the Germans
never equalled the ingenuousness of the _Volkslied_, for a burden of
knowledge hampered the flight of the poets’ imaginations and chilled
the ardor of their sentiments, and, in the attempt to escape from base
realities, they frequently lost themselves in elusive abstractions.
The allegorical element, almost absent in the _Volkslied_, was largely
represented in _Minnegesang_, which is full of poetic allusions to
the heavenly virtues that lead to salvation, and to the deadly sins
that pave the road to perdition. _Minnegesang_ was more personal and
direct than the _Volkslied_, which tends to socialize or generalize an
individual experience until it applies and appeals to all. A product
of the castles, _Minnegesang_ was frequently a matter of ambition,
encouraged by the hope of finding favor with a princely patron or
winning the love of a high-born lady. The _Volkslied_, a product of the
people, made no such appeal and was its own reward. The tournaments
of song were therefore limited to the _Minnesinger_ and represented a
counterpart of those other contests which in the period of chivalry
brought out physical prowess and skill.
There is an element of partisan controversy in the writings of even
recent historians concerning the respective merits of the Troubadours
and Minnesinger, some maintaining the superiority and originality of
the latter, while others, like Combarieu, call them simply 'imitators’
of the Troubadours. The fact that they appeared somewhat later is
not sufficient evidence for such a statement, however, and may be
explained by the fact that in Germany chivalry flourished later. The
German knights, it will be remembered, did not participate in the first
Crusade. Doubtless the same influences making for exalted expression
were at work in both countries and the early epics of which we have
spoken were in a sense the common property of both. Moreover, the epic
poems of the Celtic people (the Breton _lais_, etc.) preceded the
Provençal lyrics and probably reached Germany by direct road.
A fundamental difference between the two schools, which strongly argues
a separate origin, is the fact that in form _Minnegesang_ approached
the heavier epic style of the Northern bards, rather than the lighter
lyric vein of the Southern singers. Inasmuch as German poetry
contained a great variety of verse-forms with a varying number of
syllables, _Minnegesang_ developed a great variety of rhythms. Unlike
Romance lyricism, German composition never forsook the principle of
_accentuation_ for the sake of mere syllabic proportion (enumeration).
In other words, the Germans considered only the accented syllables,
subordinating the unaccented so that they might be either eliminated
or increased in number without disturbing the rhythmic contour; which
means a very different relation between text and melody. Melody
corresponding with verbal accent makes for correct emphasis and a
natural and logical declamation.
The stereotyped contour of the Troubadour songs which their composers
sought to overcome by excessive melodic ornament is not found to the
same extent in _Minnegesang_, where the change of hypermetres and
catalectics provides in itself a considerable variety of rhythm even
where the same melody is retained for a succession of stanzas. This
sort of adaptation must have required considerable skill in execution;
it has, moreover, given no end of trouble to modern transcribers in
the determination of phrase limits. In the example here given we
follow the interpretation of Riemann. It is an excerpt from the Jena
manuscript, being the only example dating from the twelfth century. Its
author is 'old _Spervogel_,’ and its serious contemplative character
will illustrate the difference between the works of Troubadours and
Minnesinger. We give only the first line of the melody in four of the
thirteen forms which it assumes over the various texts of succeeding
verses.
[Illustration: Music]
1. Swa ein vriund dem an-dern vriun de bi-ge-stat--
[Illustration: Music]
2. Swer si-nen gůt-en vriund be-hal-ten--wil--
[Illustration: Music]
3. Mich nympt wun-der daz--eyn rey-ne by-der-be man--
[Illustration: Music]
4. Eyn e-de-le kun-ne sti-get of--by ey-nem man--
A form especially cultivated by the Minnesinger was the aubade
(_Tagelied_) which originated with the Provençal Troubadours. In its
German form it usually represents a lover, lingering near his beloved,
whom the watchman’s trumpet call announcing the dawn’s approach speeds
on his homeward way. In the earliest known _Tagelied_, by Diet von Eist
(1180), the song of a bird is heard instead of the watchman’s call, but
in later examples the horn-call assumes greater prominence and is even
represented by a melody without text at the beginning or in the middle
of a verse. In one by Wizlaw such a sequence of apparently superfluous
notes at the end of the first verse puzzled transcribers until
recently, when its significance was discovered. In subsequent verses of
this example words are supplied for the notes of the call.
[Illustration: Music]
List du in der min-ne dro,
ichse den lech-ten mor-ghen fro.
De vo-ghe-l’n sin-ghen den tac,
her ist ho.
The 'instrumental’ portions may perhaps have been hummed in imitation
of the horn, but the principle is the same. Still later we find
examples, such as the _Nachthorn_ and _Taghorn_ of the Monk of
Salzburg, which are marked _Auch gut zu blasen_ ('Also good for
blowing’).
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE TOURNAMENT OF SONG IN THE WARTBURG.]
One of the early names of Minnesingers is that of Tannhauser, or
Tannhäuser, who was born between 1210 and 1220. To him is credited a
Busslied (song of penitence), but it was probably in existence long
before customary among penitents, and only later ascribed to him.
The participation of Tannhäuser in the song tournament of the Wartburg
as represented in the Wagner opera, is obviously a dramatic license of
the composer, as the event took place before his birth, in 1208. One of
the most striking figures is Nithart von Riuwenthal, who endeavored to
infuse new life into the courtly formalism of _Minnegesang_ by drawing
upon the folk song and folk dance.[80] He called the new genre which
he created, and which was a mild parody upon the peasant tunes then
popular in rural Austria and Bavaria, _dörperliche singen_ (village
singing), in contrast to the _höfische singen_ (courtly singing) of
this class. His dance songs differ from other Minnesinger’s lyrics in
their syllabic structure, as of necessity their pronounced rhythm did
not admit superfluous syllables. The melodic correspondence between
rhyming verses already noted in Troubadour _chansons_ is a prominent
feature with Nithart, but more remarkable than this is the fine
imitation of melodic elements corresponding to short rhyming lines
within simple verses (_Stollen_ or _Abgesang_).
[Illustration: Music]
Wis wil-kom-men mei-nen schin!
Wer möcht uns er-gez-zen din?
Wan du kannst ver-swen-den pin.
Daz sagt uns di-siu diet.
Der win-der ist so lang hie g’leg’n.
Uf dem veld und in den weg’n:
Wil-li-klich gab er den seg’n.
Da er von hin-nen----schiet.
Nu wil du di hel-de a-ber ern.
Und wil klei-nin vo-ge-lin die sue-ze stim-me lern.
Daz sie bald in dem
Wald ir sue-zen sank ge-mern.
Wizlaw von Rügen, another Minnesinger who tried to leave the beaten
path, showed a marked tendency toward a more direct and faithful
reflection of the emotional contents of his song. His _senende claghe_
(longing complaint), in which he emulates what he refers to as the
_senende wise_ (melody) of the untutored man, is an evidence of the
attempt of Minnesinger at 'characterization,’ and we frequently meet
with such specific names of _Töne_ or _Weisen_, which indicate the
intention to convey an individual sentiment in melody. The apparent
sameness in many of the tunes seems less insistent when we consider the
question of _tempo_ which must have differentiated their performance,
but which was never indicated in the manuscripts.
Hermann der Damen and Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed _Frauenlob_
for his songs in praise of women, were famous for their _Leiche_,
allegorical sacred songs on the order of the 'sequences,’ with melodies
strictly adapted to a text, consisting of irregular stanzas with little
repetition. Of the songs of the two greatest Minnesinger, Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, only the poems exist: the
melodies passing for theirs are of doubtful origin.
The greatest patrons of _Minnegesang_ among the sovereigns of Germany
were the Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), who died in 1190; Conradin,
the last of the Hohenstauffen, who died 1268; and Wenceslaus of
Bohemia, a contemporary of Conradin. Minnegesang was not to the same
extent as Troubadour poetry a courtly art, yet the castles of these
sovereigns naturally became centres of development, as did also the
courts of the Austrian dukes, when Heinrich von Melk, der Küremberger,
Dietmar von Eist and Nithart (Neidhart) held forth; the courts of
the margraves of Bavaria and Swabia, where we find the margrave of
Rietenburg, Meinloh von Seveningen, Spervogel, and Reinmer von Zweter;
and finally the castle of the landgrave of Thuringia, which boasted of
such bright ornaments as Tannhäuser, Heinrich von Veldecke, Walter von
der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, of whom the last two have
attained the rank of national poets. The formal, stately character of
Minnesong prevented its becoming as popular as the Troubadour song in
France. Another reason for this is the fact that the more pronounced
caste feeling of the Germans forbade them to enlist the assistance of
musicians of inferior station. Whatever accompaniment there may have
been was provided by the poet-singers themselves.
VII
With the decline of feudalism and chivalry and the development of the
industries the middle class acquired a social prominence which roused
dormant ambitions and developed latent abilities. The craftsmen had
formed societies with strictly graded membership, a most elaborate
set of statutes and rigid ceremonial of initiation. They were as much
a social as an intellectual manifestation being developed to mutual
improvement and recreation, and music entered largely into their
program. Association with Minnesingers who were not of noble rank
and who, instead of bearing the title _Ritter_ (knight), were called
_Meister_ (masters), gradually awakened the desire of the good burghers
to emulate the example of the aristocracy and cultivate song in the
manner of _Minnegesang_. The story that Emperor Otto I was founder of
_Meistergesang_ (master song), and gave to twelve masters, among them
Heinrich Frauenlob, Barthel Regenbogen, and Klingsohr, something like
a charter, has long been proved a myth, since the emperor and these
personages were not even contemporaries. But the fact that Frauenlob,
who was one of the last Minnesingers, is claimed as one of the
founders of _Meistergesang_, shows how closely the latter followed
upon the former. There is little doubt, however, that the master-song
was first cultivated in a _Meistersingschule_ (school of master song)
in Mayence, whence it spread to other cities, foremost among them
Nuremburg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ulm, and Munich.
The _Meistersingschulen_ recruited their members from the
singing-schools of the artisan guilds. Candidates were subjected
to a rigorous examination and had to account not only for their
previous life, their family connections, moral standing, and religious
convictions, but had to pledge themselves to hold the ideal of their
art, to live a pure and worthy life, and to be loyal and helpful to the
fellow-members of the school. There were 'school-friends,’ 'scholars,’
'poets,’ and 'singers.’ Above them in rank were four _Merker_--markers
or judges; one of whom had to compare the text of the song with the
scriptural passage upon which it was founded, while the second judged
the syllabic accent, the third the rhyme, and the fourth the tune.
The highest grade was that of _Meister_, a title conferred upon him
who was capable of fixing the standard of both text and music. Prize
contests were a feature of the public performances and carried on the
tradition of the song tournament of chivalry. The meetings were held in
church. The prize consisted of a string of ornamental coins, a bunch
of artificial flowers, or the permission at the end of the meeting to
stand at the church door and receive from the parting audience a fee
in current coin. The spirit of mediæval artisan life and of scholastic
formalism was paramount in the organization and all its activities. It
is admirably reflected in Richard Wagner’s _Meistersinger von Nürnberg_
where, embodied in the figure of Beckmesser, the _Merker_ becomes the
type of the pedant who rates the letter higher than the spirit.
As religion was foremost in men’s minds at that period,
_Meistergesang_ dealt at first mainly with religious topics and
turned out prosy biblical paraphrases with numerous historical and
allegorical allusions. The versification followed closely the models
of the _Minnegesang_, the structure of the masters’ strophes being
almost identical with that of their aristocratic compatriots. Even
the terms _Weise_ and _Ton_ used by the later Minnesingers to denote
metre and melody, were adopted by the master singers. The song itself
was in the form of a so-called _Bar_; its parts were _Gesätze_; each
_Gesatz_ consisted of two _Stollen_ (strophe and anti-strophe) sung
to the same melody; then followed a Stollen in the tune of the last
Gesatz. The rules governing the composition of these songs were called
_Tabulatur_. The verse-form or _Ton_ was given special names, such
as the _lange Ton_ or _graue Ton_, or suggesting the contents, were
called _Beerweis_, _Brunnenweis_, _Blutton_, _Lindenschmidtton_, or
named after the authors, as _Regenbogenton_, _Schilherton_, etc.
Frauenlob was held in such esteem by the greatest of the mastersingers,
that Hans Sachs himself wrote some twenty-five songs or more in the
_Frauenlobton_. Although the structure of these songs was hidebound in
formal restrictions, the spirit reflected a sturdy sincerity which was
in keeping with the racial temperament of the singers and not without
charm.
Few manuscripts of the Meistersingers contain the music of the songs,
and their notation is not always reliable. They employed neumes,
like the Minnesingers before them, but they limited themselves
almost exclusively to semi-breves, reserving the minims only for the
ornamental figures. These figures, called _Blumen_[81] (flowers,
_fiorituri_) when inserted as an interlude or at the final cadence made
a pleasing effect, in contrast to the even movement of the melody
which, without any perceptible rhythmic division, was likely to be
monotonous. Recent musical authorities, among them Riemann, incline to
the opinion that the mastersingers’ melodies were far better than the
reputation they enjoy. While some writers claim that they accompanied
their songs on the harp, the violin, lute, or zither, others make no
mention whatever of instrumental accompaniment, and Genée, in his book
on Hans Sachs and his time, distinctly states that they were sung
without accompaniment.[82]
Among the most famous Meistersingers were Heinrich Frauenlob (mentioned
above), Hans Foltz, Hans Rosenplüt, Konrad Nachtigall, Konrad Murner,
Michel Behaim, Jörg Schilher, Bartel Regenbogen, Heinrich von Ueglin,
and Muskatblüt. But far above his colleagues towers Hans Sachs, the
shoemaker poet of Nuremberg. His achievements as poet, dramatist,
and musician are uneven in quality; his farces assure him of a more
prominent place in German literature than the rank accorded to him in
musical history for his setting of the psalms. But taken as a whole
his personality typifies what was best in the art of his class at
that period--an art practised under conditions which did not favor
the free and bold flight of creative genius. It was Hans Sach who
first of all the mastersingers openly espoused the cause of the new
church by greeting the appearance of Luther in his famous song, _Die
Wittenbergisch Nachtigall_. In his naïve, sincere devotion to the new
creed he undertook also to 'revise’ some of the older master songs
to make them conform to the new spirit, and his contributions to
Protestant church music were highly esteemed by his contemporaries.
Individual impulse, both emotional and musical, being curbed by rigid
rules, _Meistergesang_ was a less direct expression of personality
than _Minnegesang_, and a less frank reflection of sentiment than
the _Volkslied_. Lacking spontaneity and wider human appeal, it
fostered a spirit of severe formalism which could not have much
influence upon the development of music in general. On the other
hand, this formalistic severity imparted a technical and spiritual
discipline which was not to be undervalued, and the stress laid upon
a serious and dignified attitude toward the art of music may have
done no little toward counterbalancing the frivolous tendencies which
sprang up here and there during the religious, social, and political
unrest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nor was the relation
between _Meistergesang_ and the Reformation without influence upon the
development of Protestant church music. For in the slow and measured
movement of the songs, dealing with sacred themes and sung _unisono_ by
the members of the _Singschule_ at the opening of their meetings, one
can recognize an essential feature of the Protestant Chorale.
Thus we may conclude with the statement that the real value to
posterity of the art movements we have discussed lies in their
influence upon the two great social movements that signalize the dawn
of the modern era, namely, the Renaissance in Italy and the Reformation
in Germany, both of which are again reflected in the music of a later
day. The new spirit is echoed in the sublime words of Hans Sachs:
'Awake! Draws nigh the break of day,
I hear upon the hawthorn spray
A bonny little nightingale.
Her song resounds through hill and dale.
The night descends the Western sky,
And from the East the dawn draws nigh.
With red ardor the flush of day
Breaks through the cloud banks, dull and gray.’[83]
A. v. E.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] 'Renaissance in Italy,’ Vol. II.
[70] The legend of Tannhäuser, perpetuated in Wagner’s opera, is an
example of this superstition.
[71] _Complainte_ was the generic name for the narrative form of song;
the later _chansons de geste_, the legend of the Passion and of the
Saints, early romances and the _ballades_ of the peasants all belonged
to this genus.
[72] Julien Tiersot: _L’histoire de la chanson populaire en France_.
[73] Karl Bücher: _Arbeit und Rhythmus_.
[74] The 'cow-horn tune’ of Salzburg (fourteenth century) suggests that
the arpeggio manner may have been derived from the horn itself, which
was the most common instrument in the pastoral regions of the Tyrol and
Switzerland.
[75] Jules Combarieu: _Histoire de la musique_.
[76] Fr. Diez: _Die Poesie der Troubadours_.
[77] The Middle-Age hurdy-gurdy.
[78] B. at Arras, _ca._ 1230; d. in Naples in 1287. His father was
a well-to-do burgher, who destined him for holy orders and sent him
to the Abbey of Vauxcelles. But his falling in love with a certain
_demoiselle_ Marie changed the course of his career. However, he
separated from her in 1263, and retired again as a clerical to Douai.
In 1282 he entered the service of Duke Robert II of Artois and
accompanied him in his expedition to Sicily, where he wrote some of his
most important works for the entertainment of the French court. _Le geu
de Robin et Marion_ was preceded by other pieces, including _Le geu de
la feuillée_ (1262), but they were of a frivolous and even licentious
character.
[79] Ed. de Coussemaker: _Œuvres complètes du Trouvères Adam de la
Hâle_.
[80] The terms _Tanzwise_ and _Tanzliet_ are attached to not a few
songs of Minnesingers, notably to those of Ulrich von Lichtenstein and
Reinmar der Fiedler.
[81] The _Blume_ was sometimes applied to the first syllable of a song
when it was probably intended to prepare the mood, but produced a
rather ludicrous effect. Even Hans Sachs begins his song _Drey frummer
König Juda_ with a _Blume_ of ten notes, all on the word _drey_.
[82] R. Genée: _Hans Sachs und seine Zeit_.
[83] From the English translation of _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_,
by Frederick Corder.