Contents of Song Texts for Court and City
The songs of this period prove to be flexible both in terms of their musical design and their texts. This made them suitable for widespread cultivation across various social spaces. Otherwise, it would be hardly conceivable that contrafacta would hold such a prominent place in the (especially early) song repertoire, since they sometimes, as in the case of Dich muter gotes rüff wir an (» Ch. Isaac’s Canonic Doubling), underwent a radical shift in meaning. Nor could the sociocultural migration of these songs be easily understood. Even songs with clearly courtly themes were readily received in monastic life and urban bourgeois settings, and if necessary, interpreted metaphorically. For example, love songs whose texts include pledges of fidelity and laments of parting reflect the typical sentiment of a courtly society constantly on the move, where the sexes only met episodically. Such courtly songs do not always match the experience of the bourgeois world, but they convey a general atmosphere. A similar case is the traditional Minnesang motif of the Tagelied, in which lovers part at dawn, an experience that would have been impossible in a city with strict controls. Some content that was specific to life at court, such as the complaints about the dangers of envy, which could also be interpreted in a more political sense. Such songs aimed to be more specific than simply moralising about the wickedness of the world. Source for these songs from bourgeois contexts often transmit them with no text at all, or with a substitute text. Senfl’s resolute song Poch trutzen grausam sehen ist jetzt der lauf (“To assert one’s claims with force, to be hostile, to glare threateningly – this is now the custom”), which ventriloquises a courtier arming himself against intrigue, is fittingly found in the courtly song manuscript » D-Mbs Mus. ms. 3155. A few years later, in the Basel partbook » CH-Bu F X 1–4, the text is missing (as is often the case). The motto of the Basel printing office of Johann Bergmann von Olpe, “Nichts ohn Ursach” (“Nothing without cause”), which is both profound and general, functions as a textual placeholder. This replacement title is also rich in allusion, for this printer’s device was also found in Sebastian Brant’s famous Narrenschiff, although that source castigates human vices in general and not just those at court.
The connection between song texts and courtly ways of life led contemporaries to occasionally refer to songs as “courtly airs”. This term was adopted in twentieth-century scholarly literature to categorise songs that present themselves as ambitious in their choice of words, development of ideas, and metre. Composers typically set such texts to music by paying closer attention to the linguistic character in the newly invented tenor voices and in the musical setting than was the case with song types that modern literature contrasts under the label “folk song”[39] (Cf. » B. Volkslieder?).
[1] For example, So lanc so meer as So lang si mir (in I-TRbc 90, fol. 344v) or Een vraulic wesen as Ein frölich wesenn (in the songbook of Johannes Heer, CH-SGs Ms. 462, fol. 28v–30r).
[2] Binchois’ Dueil angoisseux becomes De langwesus in I-TRbc 88, fol. 204v, De langwesus; of the frottola line “Tente a l’ora, ruzinente, ch’io vo’ cantar” only “Dentelore” remains in the manuscript CH-Bu F X 1–4 (fol. 97), written by the Augsburg scribe Johann Wüst; a quodlibet from the Sagan partbooks (No. 118) quotes the songs Rabaßkadol and Panny, pany, baby (“Woman, woman, old woman”).
[4] These are RISM numbers 1512/1, 1513/2, [1513]/3, [1513]/3 (published in Mainz in 1517), and 1519]/5 (a woodcut reprint of a lost songbook originally published around 1510 in Augsburg, printed 1514/1515, see Schwindt 2008).
[5] On all three manuscripts, see Strohm 1993, 492–503.
[8] According to Strohm 1993, 519, and Strohm 2001, 23, the manuscript was originally in the possession of the choir school of St. Jakob, Innsbruck, whose members were employed for musical service at court. See also » G. Nicolaus Krombsdorfer.
[10] I-TRbc 89, fol. 388v–389r; I-Fn, B.R. 229, fol. 174v–175r; » Guter seltzamer und kunstreicher teutscher Gesangk; Nürnberg 1544, Nr. 8: “Heyaho nun wie sie grollen dort auff dem Ritten die geschwollen” in the Secunda pars, T. 76–85; textual reference at the beginning, bars 1–13: “Woll wir aber heben an den Danhauser zu singen” (DTÖ 147/148, 63 and 69 f.).
[11] Bienenfeld 1904/1905, 96, note 2.
[12] CH-Zz, Ms. G 438 (written c. 1524); Pfisterer 2013.
[13] A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18810 (c. 1524) and D-Mu, 8°Cod. ms. 328–331 (before 1527), also known as the “Welser Songbook”.
[14] Also known as the “Herwart” or “Augsburg Songbook”.
[15] Birkendorf 1994, vol. 1, 98.
[16] Schwindt 2013, 126–130.
[17] D-W, Cod. Guelf. 78.Quodl.4 (Southern Germany c. 1505); D-Mbs Mus. ms. 4483 (Southern Germany c. 1515); A-Wn Cod. 4337 (Vienna, early 1520s); D-W Cod. Guelf. 292 Musica hdschr. (Constance?, c. 1525).
[18] CH-Bu F X 10 (1510); CH-Bu F X 5–9 (Fascicle I: c. 1510); CH-Bu F X 1–4 (Fascicle I: c. 1517/1518, Fascicle II: c. 1524); CH-Bu F VI 26 (first quarter of the sixteenth century); CH-SGs Ms. 462 (1510–1516, 1530), also known as the “Heer Songbook”.
[19] See above note 4.
[20] RISM 1534/17: » Der erst teil. Hundert vnd ainundzweintzig newe Lieder…, hrsg. von Johann Ott, Nürnberg 1534.
[21] Sterl 1971, 24. Grünwald/Gruenwolt is documented as Persefant (under-herald) in Regensburg from 1483–1487.
[22] Grosch 2013, 48–54.
[23] A-Wn Cod. 3027 (Passau c. 1492–1494), fol. 174v–177r: “Von yppliklichen dingen”. Score reproduction in Curschmann 1970, 22 f.
[24] Quodlibet No. XX quotes the couplet “Da schalt sie jhn ein trollen, ein truncken vnd ein vollen” from the middle of the third Hesselloher stanza (Secunda pars, bars 133–137, rhythm corresponds to the song model, diastematic contour slightly modified, see DTÖ 147/148, 132).
[25] A-Whh RR V (1489-1492): Wien, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Reichsregister vol. V (1489–1492), fol. 60r.
[26] “Die situationsbasierten Thematisierungsverfahren lassen die Liebe vor allem als kulturelles Handeln in konventionalisierten Umständen erscheinen” (The situation-based methods of thematisation present love primarily as cultural action in conventionalised circumstances): Hübner 2013, 107.
[27] The earliest available source for the polyphonic Elslein song is the Sagan partbooks (PL-Kj Berol. Mus.ms. 40098). There is indeed an earlier transmission from around 1455 in the form of a monophonic melody, but with a Latin text Gaudeamus pariter (CZ-Pnm Vysehrad 376, fol. 39v; digitised in the database Melodiarum hymnologicum Bohemiae: http://tinyurl.com/gaudeamuspariter). It is very likely – or at least possible – that this is a sacred contrafactum of the secular monophonic Elslein song, though this cannot yet be documented.
[28] The earliest sources for this popular song are a broadside print of the text by Albert Kunne (Memmingen, c. 1501, see http://tinyurl.com/Ich-stund-Kunne, metadata at http://tinyurl.com/Kunne-meta) uand a freely paraphrased adaptation of melodic elements under the text marker in the tenor “Ich stund an einem Morgen”, entered around 1499/1500 on fols. 221v–222r in the Berlin mensural codex D-B Mus. ms. 40021. Both suggest a widely known song melody, although no earlier written version is currently documented.
[29] D-B Ms. germ. oct. 280, fol. 48b–49b (Nr. 33): Ich sien den morgenssterren.
[30] Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Geheimes Hausarchiv, 601, XXVI, letter from Duke Philipp to his father Wilhelm V dated 13.10.1593.
[31] On the history of the term, see Grosch 2013, 23–33. See also » B. Minnesang und alte Meister on the terminological tradition of “tenores”, which was initially not associated with polyphony.
[32] Complete transcription of both songs and further remarks in Strohm 1993, 496–499.
[34] Strohm 1989; Leverett 1995; Höink 2012. The overview should also include the Missa Ducis Saxsoniae Sing ich nit wol composed by Nicolas Champion dit Liegeois, whose song basis is already recorded before the South German manuscript D-WGl Lutherhalle Ms. 403/1048 (c. 1535/1536) in Bernhard Rem’s partbook setting D-Mu, 8°Cod. ms. 328–331 (before 1527).
[35] D-Mbs Mus. ms. 3154, fol. 53v: Tannhauser Ihr seid mir lieb (3v), fol. 151r: Veni creator spiritus, and Thanhauser jr seit mir lieb. Heidrich 2005, 54 ff.
[36] Klüpfel; Karl (ed.): Urkunden zur Geschichte des Schwäbischen Bundes (1488–1533), vol. 1, Stuttgart 1846, 24.
[37] On authorship, see Leverett 1995; on the musical style in the context of Frederick III, see Schmalz 1987; on the title, see Strohm 1989.
[38] Schwindt 2006, 51–56.
[40] See Schwindt 2013, 127 and 133.
[41] Edited in Adler/Koller 1900, 269. Further details on this song and its text in Schwindt 1999, 58–62.
[42] Hübner 2013, 107.
Recommended Citation:
Nicole Schwindt: “Lieder in der Region Österreich, ca. 1450–ca. 1520”, in: Musikleben des Spätmittelalters in der Region Österreich <https://musical-life.net/essays/lieder-der-region-osterreich-ca-1450-ca-1520> (2016).