Minnesang to Bach

German Music

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · From Minnesang to Bach

The "land of music" story usually begins with Bach, but there was a good deal of German music before him, and much of what we know of Bach comes through later admirers. This chapter runs from the songs of medieval knights and the guild singers of the towns, through Luther and the Protestant chorale, to the Baroque composers Schütz, Telemann, Handel and Bach. It also asks how far the picture of Bach as a towering national figure is the work of later generations. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Medieval and Early Song

Minnesang

Songs of courtly love composed and sung by knights and court poets in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, such as Walther von der Vogelweide (check the dates). Few melodies survive in clear form, so much is reconstruction.

Meistersinger

Guilds of craftsmen in towns like Nuremberg who practised strict rules of song-making from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Hans Sachs is the best-known figure (check). Wagner's opera (Chapter 5) later made them famous.

Church and town music

Plainchant, polyphony in churches and cathedrals, and town musicians (Stadtpfeifer) who played for civic ceremonies, were the working base of music (check the terms).

Luther and the Chorale

Singing for all. Martin Luther (1483 to 1546) wanted congregations to sing in German, and he wrote or adapted hymns, including "Ein feste Burg" (A Mighty Fortress), whose tune and authorship scholars discuss (check).
The chorale. The Lutheran congregational hymn, with a plain melody and German words, became a lasting basis for church music, and composers wrote organ music and choral works on chorale tunes for centuries.
Schools and choirs. Church choirs and schools, such as the Thomasschule in Leipzig, trained boys in music (check the details), and this system supplied musicians for the later Baroque.
A caution. The idea that Protestantism made Germany "musical" is a popular claim, but Catholic regions also had a strong musical life (check).

The Baroque Generation

Composer (check dates)	Place and work	Note
Heinrich Schütz (1585 to 1672)	Dresden court; sacred choral music and early German opera work	Often called the most important German composer before Bach.
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681 to 1767)	Hamburg and elsewhere; an enormous output of church, orchestral and chamber music	In his lifetime more famous than Bach (check).
George Frideric Handel (1685 to 1759)	Born in Halle; worked in Italy, then London from the 1710s	Became a British subject; Messiah (1742) is his best-known work (check).
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 to 1750)	Posts in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar, Köthen and from 1723 Leipzig	Church cantatas, Passions, organ and keyboard works, and the Brandenburg Concertos.

Bach in Leipzig

The job. From 1723 Bach was Thomaskantor in Leipzig, responsible for music in the city's main churches and for teaching at the school (check). It was a demanding post with many duties.
The output. He composed a large number of cantatas for the church year, the St John Passion and St Matthew Passion, and the Mass in B minor (check the dates and the count of cantatas that survive).
The reputation in his lifetime. He was respected as an organist and keyboard virtuoso, but as a composer he was seen by many as old-fashioned in his later years (check how far this is accurate).
After his death. Much of his music faded from public view, and it was kept alive by a small circle of pupils and admirers.

The Bach revival The picture of Bach as the supreme German composer was largely built later. Felix Mendelssohn's performance of the St Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829 is often named as a turning point (check), and the nineteenth-century Bach Society published a complete edition. The "land of music" reputation owes much to this revival (Chapter 4), so Bach's greatness and the story told about it are two different things.

A British comparison Handel settled in London and wrote for the British court and public, and his oratorios became a staple of British choral societies (check). He is a reminder that musical life in this period crossed borders freely, and that "German music" and "British music" overlap in his case.

Check the details Dates, posts and counts of works are from general knowledge and often vary between sources, especially for the medieval material, where surviving music is thin. Check against a reputable musicology reference before quoting any of them.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Make a timeline of six milestones from Minnesang to Bach's death, and say in one line what each contributed to German music.

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Exercise 2

Explain in a short paragraph what a chorale is and why it mattered for later German music, avoiding the claim that only Protestants made music.

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Exercise 3

Compare how Bach was regarded in 1750 with how he was regarded in 1850, and name two things that changed his standing.

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Quick Reference

Early song: Minnesang (knights), Meistersinger (guilds), church and town music (check)
Luther: German congregational singing and the chorale (check)
Baroque: Schütz, Telemann, Handel (Halle, then London), Bach (Leipzig from 1723) (check)
Revival: Mendelssohn's 1829 Matthew Passion performance and the Bach edition (check)
The caution: Bach's later fame is partly a nineteenth-century construction