and taxes in South Tyrol and also confi rmed his rank
as imperial knight. After the death of Duke Frederick,
Oswald and his allies successfully organized opposi-
tion against the Habsburgians in South Tyrol, as they
could infl uence and dominate the young successor,
Duke Sigmund, at that time still under age, for several
years. Ultimately, however, the landed gentry, and so the
Wolkenstein family, increasingly lost ground and had
to submit to the centralized government, the growing
weight of the urban class, and even the economic power
of the peasants.
Whereas Oswald’s political career sheds signifi cant
light on the political and economic history of the early
fi fteenth century, his poetic production has earned him
greatest respect among modern philologists and mu-
sicologists since the full rediscovery of this amazing
literary personality as of the early 1960s. In contrast to
most other medieval poets Oswald created his songs for
personal reasons and commissioned his fi rst personal
collection of his works in 1425, manuscript A, to which
he added songs until 1436, perhaps even 1441. In 1432
the second collection was completed, manuscript “B,”
in which Oswald also incorporated a stunning portrait
of himself created by the Italian Renaissance painter
Antonio Pisanello or one of his disciples while the poet
was staying in Piacenza, Italy, in the entourage of King
Sigismund. Both manuscripts were most likely produced
in Neustift, near Brixen, and contain melodies for many
of the songs. In 1450 Oswald’s family had another
copy of his songs made in a paper manuscript (“c”—by
convention, paper manuscripts are listed by lowercase,
parchment by uppercase letters), which is almost identi-
cal with manuscript “B” but lacks the notations.
Although twenty of Oswald’s more traditional
songs were also copied in a number of other song
collections all over Germany throughout the fi fteenth
and sixteenth centuries (the last one in 1572), the poet
was soon forgotten after his death, probably because
his most important songs were too autobiographical
and idiosyncratic, and also too innovative for his time.
Some of the texts contain surprisingly erotic elements
and seem to refl ect Oswald’s private experiences with
his wife. His prison songs and his dawn songs are
unique for his time, and so the various polyglot songs
in which he combined a string of languages to present
his own linguistic mastership. On the one hand Oswald
demonstrated a thorough familiarity with conventional
German courtly love song, or Minnesang; on the other
he introduced melodies and poetic images from French,
Flemish, and Italian contemporaries. Many of Oswald’s
songs are polyphonic and refl ect an amazing variety of
musical forms, such as the caccia (hunt, Kl. 52), or the
lauda (praise, Kl. 109).
Hardly any other poet before him had such an excel-
lent command of the broadest range of lyrical genres, as
his oeuvre contains marriage songs, spring songs, prison
songs, war songs, autobiographical songs, travel songs,
dawn songs, Marian hymns, calendar songs, Shrovetide
songs, songs about city life, songs in which he criticized
both the rich merchants and the arrogant courtiers, vari-
ous religious songs, and repentance songs.
Oswald was also a master of onomatopoetic expres-
sions, such as in his Kl. 50, where the arrival of spring
is vividly conveyed through the imitation of birdsongs.
He seems to have learned much both from the Middle
High German Neidhart tradition and from the Middle
Latin tradition of boisterous and vivacious love songs as
in the Carmina Burana. In addition, the Italian trecento
(thirteenth-century) poets Cecco Angiolieri, Giannozzo,
and Franco Sacchetti might have provided Oswald with
important poetic models, but in his many old-age songs
we also discover possible infl uences from the French
poet Charles d’Orléans. Moreover, some scholars have
suggested François Villon as a possible source for
Oswald’s autobiographical songs. Considering Oswald’s
extensive travels throughout western and southern Eu-
rope, Spanish and Flemish poetry also might have had
a considerable impact on his work, as he adapted his
models by way of contrafacture (use of secular melody
in religious song). Recently we have also learned that
contemporary folk poetry, proverbs, and perhaps specifi c
legal formulas can be discerned in Oswald’s language.
Even narrative epics such as the Old Spanish El Cid
and the Italian Decamerone by Boccaccio might have
infl uenced him in his compositions. Finally, the poet
also translated several Latin sequences that were usually
performed during the liturgy.
Oswald’s poetic genius transformed all these sources
and models into highly individual poetic expressions.
We will probably never reach a full understanding of
which elements the poet borrowed from his predeces-
sors and contemporaries, but we know for sure that
Oswald had an extremely open mind for novel ideas and
thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with a wide variety
of poetic genres, styles, and images. He was one of the
fi rst medieval German poets to correlate closely text
and melody and also created astoundingly polyphonic
effects typical of Ars nova and the Italian trecento
culture. Curiously, though, Oswald does not seem to
have been in contact with humanists and Renaissance
writers, even though he once refers to Petrarch (Kl. 10,
28), whose concept of man’s sinfulness seems to have
infl uenced Oswald’s religious thinking. In this regard
the poet is quite representative of his own time, as he
still lived in the medieval tradition and yet also opened
his mind to many new approaches to music (Ars nova)
and poetry.
Oswald’s oeuvre can be located at the crossroads
between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as
the poet belonged to neither cultural period yet sharedOSWALD VON WOLKENSTEIN