Germany Music Part 3
Almost simultaneously the melodic art of the Minnesänger was built on Gregorian and troubadour (Provençal) elements on the one hand, and on elements derived from the national cantata dance on the other. If by Walter von der Vogelweide nothing else remains for sure and integral that the Doric Palästinalied, Neidhart of Reuental has left us a rich collection of popular melodies, which are accompanied by the songs (of a more religious nature) by Heinrich Frauenlob (who died in 1306) and Prince Wizlav von Rugen; the main document is the manuscript of songs which is preserved in Jena. Around 1400 a second flowering of this Minnesänger art appearswith the names of Ermanno monaco of Salzburg, of the realistic Tyrolean poet Oswald of Wolkenstein and of Count Hugh of Montfort, of Bregenz; especially Wolkenstein draws his art from the full movement of profane polyphony, and often shows that he knows the currents of the ars nova of Florence and of the French from F. di Vitry to Germany Machault. A notable monument of profane polyphony is found in the canon for St. Martin of the convent of Lambach.
After this second flowering, from the chivalrous costume of the Minnesänger we pass, in the cities, to a monodic current in the bourgeois and artisan schools of the Meistersänger that culminates in the work of Hans Sachs, and to a polyphonic current in the practice of vocal chamber music. instrumental, of contents taken from the repertoire of folk- song books of Locham (Nuremberg, 1450) Glogau and Monaco.
At the same time an organ school develops, based on the so-called Colorierung (v. Color), which gives the first essays in the work Fundamenta organisandi by Corrado Paumann (contemporary of A. Squarcialupi and well known also in Italy, where he was for some time) and in the Orgelbuch of Buxheim. For the organ and the lute, Germany had its own tablatures and, during the century. XV, came to spread numerous compositions for these two instruments. At the Duke of Milan and at the Duke of Ferrara we find the famous lutenists Bertoldo of Basel and N. Schlifer, and the organist R. Agricola (the famous humanist); in Venice he was the first organist of S. Marco E. Murer; in Milan the cathedral organ was built in 1487 by A. Dilmann; in Modena the titular composer was Giuseppe Martini, a priest from Costanza, whom we later find also in Milan and Ferrara: in which last city Hans von Bebris directed a chapel of young German singers and the German Peter Bonus enjoyed great favor as lutenist. We also remember that the famous organist of S. Marco Dionisio Memmo was a pupil of a German: the
Regarding the large polyphonies intended for church choirs, the Strasbourg exponents (Zeltenpferd, H. Laufenberg of Friborg) should first be noted around 1420, and around 1440 a codex of the convent of St. Emeran in Regensburg (H. Edlerau, P. Wilhelmi), around 1460 the first volumes in mensural notation, due to Bishop J. Hinderbach, preserved in Trento, which introduce us above all to the repertoire of the court chapel of Emperor Frederick III (Graz and Wiener Neustadt). In these volumes there are among other things a solemn 8-part pilgrim song In Gottes Namen fahren wir and a beautiful Mass on the German folk song Grüne Linden. Many German composers of this period came from the Rhenish countries and Westphalia. Of the style close to 1480 we are informed by the most recent volumes of the chapter of the cathedral of Trento due to J. Wiser, a collection of various authors edited by Nicolas Leopold of Nuremberg (originally from Innsbruck), a volume that is preserved in Munich, plus other sources among them contemporaries preserved in Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau. In these works the dominant influence of the Dutch schools (G. Dufay, J. Obrecht, J. Okeghem) and that of the English of the Dunstaple school is manifested; the Flemish H. Isaac, former organist with Lorenzo de ‘Medici in Florence, was able to direct the stylistic movement of the German polyphonists from his post as court composer of the emperor Maximilian. Imposing among the Choralis Constantinus composed by him for the chapter of the cathedral of Constance; no less important are his masses, while the noble melodies he sang on popular songs, such as Fr. ex. the famous Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen.
Moreover, according to equzhou.net, it must be remembered that at that time the custom of elaborating popular songs with three, four or five voices flourished, and equally the music of private or chamber use for voices and instruments flourished; so that the religious and profane popular song had the field of generating hundreds of beautiful melodies, admirable not only for the quality of the invention but also for the richness of the rhythms. The main masters in this art were Adam of Fulda chapel master of Frederick the Wise in Torgau, Erasmo Lapicida (died 1519) chapel master of Emperor Frederick III, Enrico Fink (died 1527), the Silesian T. Stoltzer (died 1526) and above all Isaac’s favorite pupil, Ludwig Senfl of Zurich, occupied first in the chapel of Maximilian in Augusta, then in Munich (died in 1555). The main sources for the study are the printed particles of Oeglin (Augusta 1511), of Arnt von Aich (Cologne 1512), of Pietro Schöffer (Mainz 1513), and the tablatures of Arnoldo Schlick, the blind organist from Heidelberg; in 1535 the rich collection of songs by H. Ott appeared; in 1536 what Fink had left, as well as a songbook by Schöffer and Apiarius (Strasbourg), a series of Frankfurt notebooks due to Egenolf (entitled Songs of the streets, of the brushwood, of the herbs). The classic collection par excellence, especially containing works by Senfl, is the Aufzug frischer deutscher Liedlein by Germany Forster, preserved in Nuremberg.
