Abgesang
The closing section of the medieval bar form AAB.
What it means
The Abgesang is the second main section of the bar form, a song form laid out as AAB. The two identical A sections are called Stollen and together form the Aufgesang; the concluding B section is the Abgesang. The Stollen repeat the same melody with different text, while the Abgesang brings new melodic material and leads to the close.
Musical use
The bar form comes from the song art of the Middle Ages and is handed down in the poetry and singing of the Minnesinger and later the Meistersinger; the terms Stollen and Abgesang stem from their tradition. From there it passed into the Protestant hymn, where it is extraordinarily widespread: numerous chorales follow the pattern in which the first two pairs of lines are sung to the same melody and a new section then follows.
The Abgesang is frequently longer than a single Stollen and occasionally takes up material from the Aufgesang again, especially toward the end — one then speaks of a Reprisenbar form, in which the close of the Abgesang links back to the Stollen. This linking lends the form cohesion.
The principle — repetition, then continuation — can also be observed in much later music, for instance in themes that consist of a short phrase stated twice and a longer spinning-out.
The bar form is to be distinguished from the arch form, which is laid out symmetrically around a centre, and from the binary form, whose sections do not stand in this relationship to one another.
Among the Meistersinger, Bar denoted the whole song of several stanzas; each stanza, the Gesätz, was divided into two Stollen and the Abgesang. Richard Wagner has this rule quoted in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: in the first act Kothner reads out the Tabulatur, according to which the two Stollen are to have the same melody, whereas the Abgesang has its own melody, not to be found in the Stollen.
Performance practice
Shape the two Stollen as related but not identical — the text differs, and that should be audible. Set in clearly anew with the Abgesang, for here the real path to the close begins. And with chorales watch for the repetition in the notation; it is often only hinted at by a repeat sign.