A Popular History of the Art of Music

ESIN

pter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the personnel of the differ

arliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade-that is, an evening song; auberde, or da

one of his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of "Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy-1240-1286. Upon many accounts the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a

is

these singers that it is quite impossible here to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two names are given by Fétis, the most familiar

song is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces of the same kind were the "Legend of the

g.

THE MIN

thirteenth century, in the

n names which have been recently celebrated in the poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannh?user, etc. All of these were from the middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the minnesinger, has come down to us with a manuscript now contained in the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was Heinrich von Meisse

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EINRICH

in the Manesse co

few of these men were real geniuses-poets of the people. One of the most celebrated was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs was a very prolific poet and compose

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S OF THE THIR

materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have all passed away, they have left a distinct impress upon musical composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouvères and minnesingers,