following major groups: early songs of elevated love
(hôhe minne) linked to Reinmar at the Viennese court;
later Minnesang; songs of down-to-earth love (nidere
minne); and late songs. Augmenting the diffi culties of
dating these songs is the strong possibility of revision in
the course of the singer’s career or changes developing
from the orality of the pieces.
Walther’s assumed apprenticeship at the Viennese
court, in the 1190s under the tutelage of Reinmar der
Alte (Reinmar von Hagenau), produced a number of
early songs. Some of these have been linked to a “Rein-
mar feud” (Reinmar-Fehde), a quasi debate revealing the
outlines of a serious polemic with his former mentor on
the nature of minne. Reinmar is the representative of the
traditional (since the 1160s) ideas inherent in the trouba-
dour lyric: his love, unrequited and unconsummated, is
for an unapproachable lady of a higher station. Walther,
on the other hand, hints at a more mutual love; his lady
is valued not for her cold, Turandot-like majesty but for
a more immediate and shared joy. The Reinmar debate
began in the 1190s and seemed to continue until after
Walther’s departure from Vienna in 1198. Emblematic of
this exchange is Walther’s Ein man verbiutet âne pfl iht
(no. L. 111,22ff), a response to Reinmar’s Ich wirbe umb
allez daz ein man (Minnesangs Frühling, no. 159,1ff),
in which, using the same melody and stanzaic form, he
weaves Reinmar’s key motifs into his song to produce
an ironically critical response to his mentor.
It is diffi cult to separate what seem to be the more
mature songs of the Reinmar debate from Walther’s non-
Reinmar–related songs of the period circa 1205–1215,
a time in which he achieved mastery of language. Here
the singer composed his most effective and inventive
songs, sharply breaking with the traditional German
Minnesang (as performed by Heinrich von Morungen,
Reinmar, and others), with its prickling tensions and
the incessant conjectures about an impossible love.
Walther’s style now becomes pointed, ironic, playful,
and original. Though still dancing around the theme of
hôhe minne, many of his songs now suggest an equal
relationship with a young woman whose station is not
of importance and whose designation increasingly be-
comes the generically female wîp (woman) rather than
the socially hierarchical frouwe (lady). In Si wunderwol
gemachet wîp, (L. 53,25ff), he sings of the physical at-
tributes of a woman not of the nobility, completing his
catalog of adulation with an unprecedented image of the
woman, unclothed, stepping cleanly from her bath.
Among the songs of this period are some that appear
outside the scope of the Minne theme. The so-called
Preislied (panegyric) Ir sult sprechen willekomen (L.
56, 14ff) is possibly a response to the troubadour Peire
Vidal (fl. ca. 1187–1205), whose unkind character-
izations of German deportment probably rankled at
German-speaking courts. Walther’s praise of German
(tiutschiu) woman and, by extension, German culture
is unique in medieval song.
During these years Walther also composed songs
with bucolic settings about the real and physical love of
a young woman who seems tangential to courtly circles
(songs of nidere Minne, sometimes called Mädchenli-
eder). In “Herzeliebez frouwelîn” (L. 49, 25ff) he is
charmed by a woman or girl whose glass ring he values
more than the gold ring of a queen. “Nement, frowe,
disen cranz” (L. 74, 20ff) projects a dream vision of
his beloved, a pretty girl (wol getânen maget) portrayed
in the scenery of the Carmina Burana, that is, under a
blossoming tree on a meadow graced by fl owers and the
singing of the birds.
“Under der linden” (Beneath the Linden Tree, no. L.
39,11ff) is Walther’s most celebrated love song. In the
tradition of the Latin pastourelle, it contains the same
predictable imagery as in “Nement, frowe, disen cranz.”
But Walther brings to this tradition a deceptively simple
language expressing the essence of the lovers’ joy, deftly
combined with a playful and delicate web of motifs to
form a song with complex levels of meaning.
Walther’s position at court required him also to excel
at the art of Sangspruch. The term pertains to songs in
which love is not the primary matter: political pieces,
songs of personal invective, requests for favors from
a patron, crusade songs, and songs with a didactic or
religious content. Each piece is normally restricted
to one stanza, though in some cases several stanzas
composed in the same tune (To n, plural Töne) can be
bound together to form a performance piece. Walther’s
Sangspruch provides a glimpse of the events of his
life as well as the fortunes of the empire under the
Hohenstaufen rulers and its ongoing struggle with the
papacy. These songs were composed largely for patrons
at the electoral courts—kings, dukes, counts, and bish-
ops—who expected from the singer both workmanlike
compositions and persuasive performances. Occasional
songs in the best sense, they were composed about spe-
cifi c events or personalities. In editions of Walther they
are usually grouped into cycles of stanzas of identical
metrical and musical form (Ton). Some, though not all,
of the stanzas of a To n have the same general thematic
content. Modern scholarship has given them associative
names that apply to some though not all of the stanzas
in the To n. In the “Konig-Friedrichston” (King Friedrich
Tune, no. 26,3ff), for example, King Friedrich (later the
emperor Friedrich II) plays a major role only in a few of
the stanzas. Each of these Töne contains between three
and eighteen stanzas.
Walther’s best-known To n, the “Reichston” (Imperial
Tune, L. 8,4ff), may well be the earliest. A triad of long
stanzas (twenty-four lines each), it begins pensively with
the trademark image of Walther sitting on a stone in the
pose of the philosopher (Ich saz ûf eime steine, I sat uponWALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE