Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

Heinrich von Meissen (d. 1318), called Frauenlob (Lady’s Praise) because of his many songs in honor of
the Virgin Mary. By Hans Sachs’s time, the Virgin had been replaced as a subject, under pressure of the
Reformation, by Bible stories and pious proverbs, and especially by verses celebrating the theory and
practice of Meistergesang itself. Such a song is Hans Sachs’s own Meisterlied, called Silberweise (“The
Silver Tune”), composed in 1513.

EX. 4-15    Hans    Sachs,  Silberweise

PEOPLES AND NATIONS

Wagner, of course, accepted the Meistersinger’s claims implicitly, and even projected the attributes of
Meistergesang back on to the Minnesinger with the enormous (and enormously anachronistic) scene in