After Latin-language religious music had dominated for centuries, in the 12th century to the 14th centuries, minnesingers (love poets), singing in German, spread across Germany. Minnesingers were aristocrats traveling from court to court who had become musicians, and their work left behind a vast body of literature, Minnelieder. The following two centuries saw the minnesingers replaced by middle-class meistersingers, who were often master craftsmen in their main profession, whose music (meistergesang) was much more formalized and rule-based than that of the minnesingers. Minnesingers and meistersingers could be considered parallels of French troubadours.
Among the minnesingers, Hermann, a monk from Salzburg, deserves special note. He incorporated folk styles from the Alpine regions in his compositions. He made some primitive forays into polyphony. The innate love of music and the desire to find in it an adequate means for emotional expression characterized the German people during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to a far greater degree than is evident among the troubadours of the neighboring Latin countries.
The Meistersinger made a sincere effort to perpetuate the musical treasure of the Minnesinger, but their stifling pedantry, their isolation from the main currents of contemporary musical life,' rendered their compositions, in comparison with the older German monophony, forced and stuffy. Nevertheless, the Meistersinger made an important contribution to the history of music. All countries had church music, and other countries had court music, but only in Germany was there such intensive musical activity among the bourgeoisie. The Meistersinger were instrumental in bringing music into the middle-class home; and they may have laid the foundations for the widespread love of music among all classes that helped in making possible the preeminent German musical productivity of other countries.
The title character of Tannhäuser is a Minnesinger: a medieval German troubadour who composed and performed songs about love, politics, ethics and current events. Minnesingers were an important part of German court life during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Their songs and poems developed and reinforced one of the defining concepts of their world: courtly love.
The term “courtly love” (minne) refers to the medieval concept of spiritual love between a brave knight and a noble lady. The lady love was usually above her knight in rank, or married to another man, or both. The knight idealized her, yearned for her, and devoted himself to her. In the world of the medieval court, marriage for love was almost unheard of. Marriage matches were made to cement political alliances or build fortunes; hence true love was thought to occur outside of marriage. Love, as opposed to marriage, was associated with personal development and private happiness. A love relationship inspired a knight to lead a better life and develop a more beautiful soul. The concept of courtly love affirmed the bold idea that there was more to a man than his title or his wealth—each individual also had a private emotional life, linked more to their soul than to their station.
The MINNESINGERS which refer to the name given to the German lyric poets of the 12th and 13th centuries. The term Minnesang, is applicable to the poems expressing the homage rendered by the knight to his mistress, is applied to the whole body of lyric poetry of the period, whether dealing with love, religion or politics. Its tone was, on the whole, far healthier and more sincere, reflecting the difference between the simple conditions of German life and the older and corrupt civilization of Provence. The minnesinger belonged to the lower ranks of the nobility, and his verses were addressed to a married woman, often above him in rank; consequently the commonest lyric themes are the lover's hopeless devotion and complaints of the lady's cruelty, expressed with a somewhat wearisome iteration. The poet was not permitted to give the lady's name, or to betray her identity; and a direct expression of passion would also have contravened the rules. The poems were from the first sung in open court to a melody of the poet's own composing, accompanied with the accompaniment of a fiddle or small harp. The older songs consisted of a single strophecast in three divisions, two (known as Stollen or doorposts) identical in form, stating and developing the argument, the third (Abgesang) of different form, giving the conclusion. Then, two or more strophes were used in a single poem, but the principle of their structure was retained. In this form were cast the Tagelied, a dialogue describing the parting of lovers at dawn; and the crusading song. Side by side with these existed the Spruch that is written in a single undivided stanza, destined for recitation and often cast in the form of a fable. The lay was written in unequal strophes, each formed of two equal divisions.
The origin of the native lyric, which flourished especially in Austria and Bavaria, is perhaps to be sought in the songs which accompanied dancing. These were not necessarily love songs, but celebrated the coming of spring, the gloom of winter &c., the commonplaces of Minnesang throughout the two centuries of its existence. These songs are contradictory to the root idea of Minnedienst, since the lady is the wooer, and the poet, at the most, an acquiescent lover.
