!!!Meistersang

Meistersang (master song), strongly formalised didactic lyric poetry 
of the 15%%sup th/%  and 16%%sup th/%  centuries practised in 
so-called singing schools after fixed rules (tabulaturs). The 
meistersingers, who belonged to the craftsmen class of the towns, 
based their meistersang on the minnesingers and epigrammatists of the 
13%%sup th/%  and 14%%sup th/%  centuries (the 12 "alte Meister" - 
"old masters") like Walther von der Vogelweide, der Marner and 
Friedrich von Sonnenburg. The lieder composed in complicated "tones" 
(melodies and metric schemes) in stanzas were performed at contests. 
The pioneers of meistersang in Austria were Heinrich von Muegeln, 
Peter  Suchenwirt and Michel  Beheim. There were Austrian singing 
schools in Schwaz (from 1532), in Wels (1549-1601, Paulus  
Freudenlechner), where H. Sachs also stayed for a short time, in 
Freistadt, Steyr (1562-1615) and Eferding (1606-1616). The 
Counter-Reformation forced many of the mostly Protestant Austrian 
meistersingers to emigrate (esp. to Germany).

!Literature
B. Nagel, Meistersang, %%sup 2/%1971; H. Brunner and B. 
Wachinger, Repertorium der Sangsprueche und Meisterlieder des 
12.-18. Jahrhunderts, 1986ff.


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