Music of Germany - Minnesingers and Meistersingers

Minnesingers and Meistersingers

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 and trouvère.

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 as well. Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Hagenau are probably the most famous minnesingers from this period.