Meistersinger
Bourgeois poet-singers in German towns of the 15th and 16th centuries.
What it means
The Meistersinger were craftsmen and townsmen in German cities who joined singing schools resembling guilds in order to compose and perform songs. Their art, Meistergesang (mastersong), flourished from the 15th into the 16th century. Performances were monophonic and unaccompanied.
The singers followed a fixed set of rules, the Tabulatur. A song had an Aufgesang of two identical Stollen and an Abgesang. The melody underlying a poem was called a Ton. Anyone who invented a new Ton could rise to the rank of master.
Musical use
Centers of mastersong were cities such as Mainz, Augsburg and above all Nuremberg. Best known is the Nuremberg shoemaker and poet Hans Sachs (1494–1576), who wrote numerous mastersongs. The Meistersinger revered legendary poets such as Frauenlob as their models. Richard Wagner set a monument to this tradition in the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).
Mastersong should be distinguished from courtly Minnesang, which was carried by knights, and from folk song, which followed no fixed rules.
Performance practice
If you sing mastersongs or the music of the opera, pay attention to the clear division into Stollen and Abgesang. Speak the text distinctly, since in mastersong the conformity of word and rhyme to the rules counted.