a stone). In the second song (L. 8,28), Walther moves
out of the meditative mode and into the political, calling
for the crowning of the true emperor, the Hohenstaufen
candidate Philipp of Swabia rather than the papally
sanctioned Otto of Brunswick, dynastic leader of the
Welf party. With pointed imagery he declares the clergy
of Rome corrupt and the times out of joint. In the third
song (L. 9,16), assuming the persona of a pious hermit,
he indicts the pope as being too young (Innocent III was
only thirty-nine), an anomaly symptomatic of the ills
besetting the curia at Rome and its imperial policy.
In 1198 Walther left Vienna and attached himself
to various Hohenstaufen courts in the middle German
regions, continuing both positive and negative associa-
tions with Philipp of Swabia (in the fi ve stanzas of the
fi rst “Philippston,” Philipp Tune, L. 18,29ff). Despite
Walther’s ardent propaganda for the imperial candidate,
he complains of Philipp’s parsimony. This theme of a
patron’s miserly qualities would become a favorite of
the later generation of Sangspruch singers in the thir-
teenth century.
The “Wiener Hofton” (Viennese Court Tune, L.
20,l6ff), largely composed after Walther’s departure
from Vienna in 1198, reveals an ambivalence about the
Viennese court, combining a longing to return to this
desirable venue with an uneasiness about his relations
with the reigning Duke Leopold VI. Walther continues
to sing in the causes of Philipp until the would-be
emperor’s death in 1208, but gradually in the course of
the fi rst decade of the thirteenth century, he forms new
courtly associations, most prominently with Hermann,
Landgrave of Thuringia, and his son-in-law, Dietrich,
Margrave of Meißen. These princes are forced to change
allegiance after Philipp’s death, leaving the imperial
candidacy open to his archrival, Otto of Brunswick.
Walther refl ects the new loyalties in the “Ottenton” (Otto
Tune, L. 11,6ff), in which he welcomes the new kaiser
to the Reichstag (imperial diet) in Frankfurt, declaring
that his patron, the Margrave of Meißen, is as loyal to
the emperor as an angel is to God. Less than a year later
the margrave and other princes (like the fallen angels)
are in open rebellion, preparing the way for a new-Ho-
henstaufen pretender, the young Friedrich II, grandson
of Barbarossa.
As was the lot of singers employed by the courts,
Walther continued the propaganda commissioned by
his various patrons. In one of his sharpest and most
amusing pieces, “Unmutston” (Disgruntled Tune, L.
34,4), Walther rants against that most ardent enemy of
the Hohenstaufen interests, Pope Innocent III, for his
collecting of German monies to fi nance the Albigensian
Crusade in 1213, accusing the Roman clergy of feasting
on capons and wine while the German laity grows lean
from fasting.
There is evidence that Walther was able to gain a
modicum of independence as overseer of a fi ef. In 1220
he composed a song of request to King Friedrich for
his own house, playing on his lord’s sympathy for a
homeless singer whose wearisome life was a procession
of one-night stands. (“König-Friedrichston,” L. 28,1).
Apparently Walther was successful, for in the same To n
(L. 28,31) he proclaims triumphantly his thanks to the
king, grateful that he need no longer go begging at the
courts of base lords for shelter.
Since these songs of praise and political propaganda
were produced on demand to suit the shifting political
alliances of a turbulent period of imperial history, one
might properly ask to what extent Walther’s songs refl ect
his own values. Many are outright propaganda, although
of a kind wrought with the highest poetic skills and a
deft sense of language. And yet many pieces reveal a
personality sharply troubled by the woeful state of the
mutable world and impelled by a desire to return to the
established, predictable, and more ethical patterns of
time past. The “Wiener Hofton” bewails the uncouth
behavior of courtly youth (L. 24,3), marking its disparity
with the days when one did not spare the rod with ill-
mannered children. More personal and sadder echoes of
this nostalgia permeate the “Elegie” (Elegy, L. 124,1 ff),
generally held to have been composed in Walther’s old
age. It too complains of the uncourtly behavior of young
people, but combines it with what must have been an
old man’s deeply personal sense of an irretrievable past.
And yet, in the last stanza, it is clear that it is a song of
outright propaganda, urging knights to undertake a cru-
sade, possibly that of Frederick II in 1227. Walther was
still the paid entertainer whose patron called the tune.
The manuscripts also contain a scattering of personal
and religious songs of one or more stanzas that cannot
properly be called Sangspruch. One is the “Palästina-
Lied” (Palestine Song, L. 14,38ff), also a recruiting
song for a crusade, containing the only complete and
proven melody among Walther’s songs. Another is the
Leich (L. 3,1ff). This most virtuosic of all medieval
lyric forms—derived from the liturgical sequence—is
a large-format song built on a series of versicles and
responses that undergo repetition and variation. It may
have been specifi cally composed for groups of singers
and instrumentalists, who would have sung and played
it antiphonally in unison or possibly with rudimentary
polyphony (organum). With its many repetitions and
variations, it often approached the complexity of a
fugue. This is Walther’s longest single performance
piece, a prayer to the Mother of God (hence called
a Marienleich), marked by lush praise of the Virgin
commingled with references to the Trinity, biblical
prefi gurations, and elements of Christian theology. Yet
even in this, Walther’s most pious work, the singer can-
not refrain from references to the Roman curia and its
“unchristian things” (unchristliche dinge).WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE