The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Meistersingers

representatives of medieval sung poetry, the meistergesang, which developed in the second half of the 13th century from later forms of the minnesong. The meistergesang is associated with the rise of the cities and the burghers.

The first song school was founded by Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen; c. 1250–1318). The Meistersingers’ poetry became especially popular in southern Germany. The Nuremberg song school, of which Hans Folz and Hans Sachs were members, was particularly famous. Later, the Meistergesang spread to Austria and Bohemia. The creative work of the Meistersingers was regulated by an extensive code, the Tabulatur, which had to be strictly followed. On certain days the Meistersingers held festive poetry competitions in church or in the town hall. From the end of the 16th century their art declined, owing to the general deterioration of the craft guilds.

The Meistersingers’ repertoire was almost exclusively devoted to biblical and religious didactic themes. Secular and love songs entered the repertoire only in the 16th century. The Meistersingers wrote many Fastnachtsspiele (Shrovetide plays). Their song schools were open until the mid- 19th century. In the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), Wagner glorified the art of the Meistersingers but ridiculed the philistine pedantry that characterized most of their poetry.

REFERENCES

Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature: Literatura srednikh vekov. Compiled by B. I. Purishev and R. O. Shor. Moscow, 1953.
Sauer, K. Die Meistersinger. Leipzig, 1935.
Schnell, F. Zur Geschichte der Augsburger Meistersingerschule. Augsburg, 1956.
Nagel, B. Meistersang. Stuttgart, 1962.

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References in periodicals archive

Lijauco, who has led his group to win several international choral competitions, said the Meistersingers were happy for the Imusicapella.

Imusicapella, PH Meistersingers dominate Bulgaria choir tilt

By contrast, Wagner's Meistersinger, which Levine also conducted last season, openly claims to be a work about the supremacy of German musical art, embodied in the final scene by Hans Sachs's peroration to the holiness of German art as it might be threatened by foreigners.

Music as gesture

The Philippine Meistersingers is one of the country's most active choirs, proclaimed as the 2011 Choir of the World and the 2006 World Choir Games Champion.

'Lupang Hinirang,' 'Bayan Ko' and other choral pieces extoling unity, freedom

It may seem slightly perverse of me to begin this review of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by praising the conducting, given where I was seated.

It may seem slightly perverse of me to begin this review of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by praising the conducting, given where I was seated

The meistersingers claimed to be heirs of 12 old masters, poets skilled in the medieval artes and in musical theory; the 13th-century poet Frauenlob was said to be their founder.

meistersinger

I'm never totally convinced by Christian Thielemann's propensity for elegant long lines and a lush, smooth, homogenous sound (vivat the dramatic shifts and turns of a typical Daniel Barenboim performance), but still, this Meistersinger is nicely paced, with lots of detail coming from the finely tuned orchestra.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG

In general the music follows the tripartite form taken over from the Provencal canso: two identical sections, called individually Stollen and collectively Aufgesang, and a third section, or Abgesang (the terms were applied by the later Meistersingers); the formal ratio between Aufgesang and Abgesang is variable.

minnesinger

(1494 - 1576) German poet and dramatist, by trade a shoemaker, most skillful and famous of the Meistersingers. In addition to his more than four thousand mastersongs, Sachs wrote many poems on moral and religious subjects, the most famous being Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall ( The Nightingale of Wittenberg, 1523), an allegory in praise of Martin Luther, and an Epitaphium (1546) on Luther's death.

Sachs, Hans

Semifinal qualifiers in the open category include Regina Coeli, TIP Choral Society, CEU Singers Manila, Lighter Side Movement, PUP Bagong Himig Serenata, EARIST Chorale Adamson University Chorale, Boscorale, Los Cantantes de Manila, Hearts in Harmony, University of Manila Singers, CEU Singers Malolos, OMPHP Youth Ensemble V, ICP Charismatic Chorale, Kinaadman Chorale, New UMAK Chorale, Magsaysay Chorale, PNU Kalibnusan Male Vocal Ensemble, The Meistersingers, Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology, Mt Carmel College Chorale, University of Baguio Voices Chorale, Koro Ilustrado, Cebu Singing Ambassadors, Voce, PLM Student Choral Society, University of Perpetual HelpDALTA, and Chorus Vocales.

MBC nat'l choir championships Dec. 9-13

Many guild workmen and tradesmen of the day practiced a type of singing based on elaborate rules; to become meistersingers ("master singers"), they had to prove themselves in a contest.

Sachs, Hans

The 106th Festival started on July 25th with a new staging of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by Barrie Kosky, the Australian-born Intendant of Berlin's Komische Operand closed August 28th with the end of the five-year run of Berlin director Frank Castorfs exuberantly iconoclastic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Letter from Bayreuth: This year, Wayne Gooding discovers the Festival interpreting Wagner's music dramas through the lens of local and national history, as it continues to thoughtfully examine its tortured past

The theater in Dessau, which was bombed during the war and reopened under the directorship of Willi Bodenstein in 1949, had already established itself as a center for Wagner performance: Bodenstein staged Tannhauser and Der fliegende Hollander in 1950 and Die Meistersinger and Lohengrin in 1951 and 1952, respectively.

Imagining Richard Wagner: the Janus head of a divided nation