Sound (literature)
The term tone ( mhd. Dôn "melody" of lat. Tonus ) is in the medieval German Sangversdichtung for both musical and linguistic structure: the sound designated in addition to the melody , the rhyme scheme and metrical construction or, in other words, the verse form . The term therefore applies to all strophic melodies of the German Middle Ages ( minnesong , verse poetry , strophic epic , late medieval song , master song ). There are also nonstrophic genres such as corpse , whose melodic units do not fall under the term tone .
Due to the limitations of the written tradition - melodies were only recorded in exceptional cases - the analysis and description of medieval tones can usually only be based on the text alone. The musical side of the poets' musical art remains largely inaccessible. A prominent exception are the numerous sayings that the Jena song manuscript has handed down.
Depending on the genre and centuries, there were different tendencies to reuse known tones and to recompose individual tones. The tendency towards the uniqueness of tones was strongest in the minstrel of the late 12th and 13th centuries. Exactly as in the Romanesque song poetry, and probably influenced by it, the principle applied here: one song - one tone.
The verse poetry, on the other hand, is based on the principle of single-pitch; Verses do not combine to form songs. Rather, the poets use their proverbs for ever new, individual, incoherent slogans. Proverb tones are often more extensive than song tones when calculated in bar numbers.
From the middle of the 13th century onwards, the principle that sounds “belong” to their inventors is apparently lost in song poetry. In poetry and especially in master singing, it is becoming more common to use a traditional, well-known melody of an "old master". The tone indication could then replace the addition of the melody. In order to be able to denote tones that are used multiple times, names came into use for them. The simplest form of naming is to quote the beginning of the text of the most famous stanza ("in the tune: An old Swiss came out"). In addition, one could raise a content characteristic to the name ( mirror-like - in two stanzas of Konrad von Würzburg there is a mirror with this name), give an indication of the use ( court tone ) or use a formal characteristic of the stanza form or melody to form the name: Lange Weise , Delicate tone , choking trunk ("throat shrike"). The name of the sound composer can also be part of the name. In song poetry and master song, the two-part tone indication (Frauenlobs Green Tone) is almost a generic norm. The oldest name notated on a note is that of the Frau-Ehren-Tone by Reinmar von Zweter , which is already entered in the Manessische Liederhandschrift (around 1300).
The authorship of the poets and the individuality of the tones have always played the least role in the sung heroic epic . The earliest texts ( Nibelungenlied ) use an anonymous, simple and probably old stanza form ( Nibelungenstrophe ). Later epics develop these types further ( Kudrun verse) or borrow the tone from other poems ( Titurelstrophe , black tone of the Wartburg war ).
See also
literature
- RSM = H. Brunner and B. Wachinger (eds.), Repertory of the singing verses and master songs of the 12th to 18th centuries. Tübingen 1986ff.