Wagner's Access to Minnesinger Melodies Prior to Completing TannhäuserAuthor(s): Larry BombackSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 147, No. 1896 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 19-31Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25434401Accessed: 27/07/2010 18:27

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Earlier versions of this paper were presented at McGill

University and Haver ford

College. My deepest thanks go to Robert Bailey, Richard

Freedman, Anne Stone, Allan

Atlas and Adrienne Fried

Block for their many helpful

suggestions. I would also

like to acknowledge Norma

Keningsberg of New York

University for permitting me to

reproduce many of the images that appear in this article.

LARRY BOMBACK

Wagner's access to Minnesinger melodies prior

to completing Tannh?user

There are 40 known manuscripts and manuscript fragments that

transmit Minnesinger music, but unfortunately, there are no extant

manuscript sources containing just text, just music, or both that are

contemporaneous with the actual makers of the songs.1 Complicating mat

ters further, the most important textual sources, which are essentially huge

anthologies of Minnesinger poetry, do not contain any music. In the few

sources where original Minnesinger music appears in legible notation, the

melodies are accompanied by new texts from later poets.2 Because of the distance in time between the oldest manuscript and the

actual lifetimes of the Minnesingers, it is not always possible to know

whether the melodies recorded are a true indication of a composer's inten

tions. Additionally, the notation in the manuscripts is often inaccurate, in

consistent, or, in the case of the staffless neumes that appear in the Carmina

Burana and Kremsm?nster manuscripts, simply indecipherable. Staffless

neume notation gives us no indication of rhythm and only a general sense of

pitch, simply pointing in which direction the melody is to move. This is a kind

of musical notation that makes sense only as a memory aid, implying that the

performer is already familiar with the melody.3 Indeed, that there are no

contemporaneous manuscript sources

suggests that these melodies were

passed down orally from generation to

generation.

There are four extant manuscripts that contain texts by Minnesingers with

musical notation attributed to the same poets. (Whether these attributions are

accurate is, of course, highly contestable, but for the purposes of this paper, the point is a moot one, as we shall soon see.) One such manuscript is the Jena

Songbook, considered the most important source of Minnesinger melodies.

It was written in the middle of the 14th century on Low German territory and

now comprises 133 sheets, although the beginning and end are lost, and there

are nine points in the body where one or more sheets are missing. The manu

script now contains 91 melodies by 29 composers. Four of these melodies are

incomplete, and there are ten instances where space was left for a melody but

no melody was provided. The Minnesinger songs are written in a clear square notation on four-line staves and have F- or C-clefs depending on the range of the melody. The text of each song is written out in full beneath the staves.4

While the melodies were preserved as unaccompanied monody, it seems

certain that many of them, particularly those used for dancing and communal

i. James V. McMahon: The

music of Early Minnesang

(Columbia, SC: Camden

House, 1990), p.75

2. Robert White Linker:

Music of the Minnesinger and

Early Meistersinger: a

bibliography (Chapel Hill:

University of North

Carolina Press, 1962), p.xi

3. RJ Taylor: The art of the

Minnesinger, vol.I (Cardiff:

University of Wales Press,

1968), pp.x, xxxviii.

4. RJ Taylor: The art of the

Minnesinger, vol.II (Cardiff:

University of Wales Press,

1968)^.290

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 19

20 Wagner's

access to Minnesinger

melodies prior to

completing Tannh?user

purposes, were accompanied in some way by instruments. RJ Taylor sug

gests that percussion instruments might have been used to beat time when a

melody had an inherent driving rhythm. Iconography and the texts them

selves indicate that the Vielle ', a bowed string instrument similar to a fiddle, was the Minnesinger's most popular instrument, and in the poems of the real

'Der Tannh?user', we are told that the harp often provided instrumental

interludes during performances of epic lays.5 Interestingly enough, this is

exactly how Wagner employs the diegetic harp in the Song Contest scene

from his opera Tannh?user, a scene which will be of particular interest to us.6

In a recent article about Wagner's medieval sources for Tannh?user,

Ulrich M?ller concluded that the composer had access to Minnesinger

poetry but not Minnesinger music, essentially reaffirming a commonly held belief among Wagner scholars.7 One source, however, seems to have

been overlooked. Wagner owned and accessed Friedrich Heinrich von der

Hagen's Minnesinger: Deutsche Liederdichter des zw?lften, dreizehnten und

vierzehnten Jahrhunderts prior to completing Tannh?user, and the fourth

volume of this massive compendium contains roughly ioo pages of Minne

singer melodies in diplomatic facsimile.

An enthusiastic German patriot and philological scholar, Friedrich

Heinrich von der Hagen (1780?1856) devoted his life to editing and turning out modern editions of medieval poetry in the Middle High German lan

guage.8 His name is well-known among Wagner scholars. In a letter from

1856 to Franz M?ller, Wagner supplied a short list of sources for the Ring that

had left a significant impression on him, and three of the ten sources on that

list were turned out by Hagen, including his edition of the Nibelungenlied?

Wagner certainly had tremendous respect for Hagen, yet I was only able

to find one allusion in the relevant literature to Hagen's Minnesinger, and

even in this instance the citation is fleeting, referring to an earlier volume in

the anthology that contains just the poems. It is doubtful that the author

actually sought out Hagen's anthology, because he undoubtedly would have

come across the music if he had.10

The original edition of Hagen's Minnesinger was published by JA Barth in

Leipzig, 1838. It comprises four volumes in three bindings. This is the edition

5-ibid., pp.281? 82.

6. It should also be noted

that this is not the only scene

in Tannh?user that contains

diegetic music, although the notion of diegetic music

plays a more prominent role

in the Song Contest than

in any other scene in the

opera. In the first act, Venus

asks Tannh?user to sing a

song to her, and that song,

interestingly enough, later

serves as the last diegetic music in the song contest.

Conscious of it or not,

Wagner employed a popular medieval practice of

recycling the same melody with a different text. Two

other instances of diegetic music include the shepherd

boy's song in the beginning of the second act, and

Wolfram's 'Evening star'

aria from the third act.

The Wolfram example is

somewhat debatable, because

although he is clearly singing his praises aloud, no one on

stage can hear them.

7. See Ulrich M?ller: ' "Nun

will ich aber heben an, vom

Tannh?user wollen wir

singen" oder: Wartburgkrieg und Tannh?user-Ballade: zu Text und Musik von

Richard Wagners Quellen', in Wartburg-Jahrbuch,

Kolloquium '...der Welt noch

den Tannh?user schuldig', Richard Wagner: Tannh?user

und der S?ngerkrieg auf

Wartburg vom 14. bis 16.

November 1993 (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 1999),

pp.32-44.

8. Jeffery M. Peck: ' "In the

beginning was the word':

Germany and the origins of German studies', in

Medievalism and the modernist

temper, edd. Stephen G.

Nichols & R. Howard Bloch

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1996),

p.139.

9. Elizabeth Magee: Richard

Wagner and the Nibelungs

(New York: Oxford

University Press, 1990), p. 19.

10. See Volker Mertens:

'Wagner's Middle Ages', trans. Stewart Spencer, in

Wagner handbook, edd.

Ulrich M?ller & Peter

Wapnewski (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1992), p.240.

Fig.i: the title pages of the fourth volume of Hagen's Minnesinger (Leipzig: JA Barth, 1838)

that Wagner owned. A second edition contained a fifth volume in the form

of an atlas, and was published in 1856 by JA Stargardt in Berlin. New Grove

says that this later edition was published in 1861, one of two major errors with

regards to the categorisation of Hagen's important anthology of the Minne

singer repertory.

The fourth volume of this compendium contains 100 or so pages of fac

similes and reproductions of secular German monophony garnered from

various medieval manuscripts. The earliest diplomatic facsimile of the entire

Jena Manuscript is also included in this volume. Why the source has been

overlooked for so long is anyone's guess. The basic contents of Hagen's

anthology are detailed in the specialist literature and in library catalogues;

however, the anthology is improperly categorised in New Grove11 as a 'major text edition' as opposed to a 'major music edition' and it is vaguely cate

gorised in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart conflated with all the

11. See Burkhard

Kippenberg: 'Minnesang', in The new Grove dictionary

of music and musicians, edd. S. Sadie & J. Tyrrell

(London: Macmillan, 2001),

pp.xvi, 721?30. Page 728

contains the bibliography where we can observe the

improper categorisation of Hagen's Minnesinger.

Oddly enough, on p.727,

Kippenberg implies that

Hagen's edition does in

fact contain music.

I still cannot understand

why the anthology was

categorised as a 'major text

edition.'

12. See Horst Brunner:

'Minnesang', in Die Musik

in Geschichte und Gegenwart:

Sachteil, 2nd ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: B?renreiter,

1994-99), pp.vi, 302-14.

Page 312 contains the

bibliography.

the musical times Autumn 2006 21

22 Wagner

s access to Minnesinger melodies prior

to completing Tannh?user

'Ausgaben'.13 Both encyclopedias imply that the earliest edition of the Jena

Manuscript, a facsimile by KK M?ller, is from 1896, well after Wagner's death. Henceforth, the prevailing belief has been that in order to have ac

cessed Minnesinger music, Wagner would have had to visit the libraries and

private collections where the original manuscripts were held, and there is no

evidence to suggest he did this.

H agen's Minnesinger is included in Curt von Westernhagen's 1966

catalogue of Wagner's Dresden library collection, which the com

poser amassed during the years 1843-49. In fact, half of Wagner's Dresden library is comprised of books that are either actual medieval texts

or accounts of medieval literature and history.14 Fortunately for historians,

169 out of the original 200 items survive, including the composer's personal

copy of Minnesingern

Wagner acquired the library for himself in the autumn of 1843, just as ne

was beginning work on Tannh?user. He had recently been appointed Kapell meister of the Royal Opera in Dresden, and while setting up his new home, with a prosperous future lying ahead, he purchased this library 'at once and

at one go, proceeding completely systematically following the plan of my intended studies.'16 This is true for the most part, but some books in the

library were published after 1843 and some of the older books were clearly later additions to the collection, although Elizabeth Magee, whose Richard

Wagner and the Nibelungs contains a detailed look at the Dresden Library

collection, does not include Hagen's Minnesinger in this latter category.

When Wagner left Dresden in 1849,tne collection passed into the hands

of his brother-in-law, Heinrich Brockhaus, to whom the composer owed a

significant amount of money. Wagner

never saw the library again.17 The col

lection is now housed at the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, and I

asked one of the archivists there, Kristina Unger, to look through Wagner's

copy of the fourth volume of Hagen's Minnesinger to see if there were any

such markings in the composer's hand. It turns out there is only one marking in the entire volume and it occurs on page 429 (fig.2). In the middle of a bio

graphy of the real Tannh?user, Wagner has drawn a straight line down the

side of the page near the bottom, bringing out a quotation in a footnote from

Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, a book that Wagner cites in his auto

biography as being of tremendous importance to him during the com

position of Tannh?user.1

In creating the plot to his new opera, Wagner combined two medieval

legends into one. He interpolated the story of the Song Contest on the Wart

burg involving the Minnesingers Wolfram von Eschenbach and Heinrich

von Ofterdingen within the larger narrative framework of the well-known

Tannh?user Ballad, inserting the contest between Tannh?user's return from

13. In terms of literature that

deals with medieval secular

German monophony, I only came across one source,

Robert White Linker's

comprehensive bibliography, which mentioned Hagen's

anthology. In James McMahon's Music of early

Minnesang there is no

mention of Hagen's edition

of the Jena Manuscript,

although there are several

other modern editions of

the Jena Manuscript cited in

his bibliography. A RILM

search for the book brings up

nothing, and a RILM search

of the name 'von der Hagen' returns a single hit, an article

about Die Meistersinger von

Nuremberg and its underlying antisemitism (see Barry

Millington's 'Nuremburg trial: is there anti-Semitism

in "Die Meistersinger?" ', in Cambridge Opera Journal

3'/3(I99I),PP-247-6o,

specifically p. 2 5 6).

14. Mertens, p.237

15. Magee, p.25.

16. ibid.

17. ibid.

18. Richard Wagner: My life, ed. Mary Whittall, trans.

Andrew Gray (New York:

Cambridge University Press,

i983),pp.259-6o.

Fig.2: page 429 in the fourth volume of Hagen's Minnesinger. In Wagner's

personal copy, the composer has drawn a straight line down the right-hand

side of the page parallel to the poem that appears in the footnote.

the Venusberg and his visit to the Pope. As is so often the case with Wagner, he manipulated the medieval legends to suit his own dramatic intentions.19

He replaced the character of Heinrich von Ofterdingen with Heinrich von

Tannh?user (although some medieval scholars believe they actually may be

one and the same), changed the contest's subject matter from praising the

various princes

in attendance to iove's supreme essence', and ended the

scene in a near melee, far different from Wolfram's decisive victory in the

original legend.

Wagner's reliance on textual sources during the development of

Tannh?user has been well-documented by researchers, but potential musical

sources have been wholly ignored. This is particularly odd, because for

someone who considered himself both a poet and a composer, it would cer

tainly make sense that he would find inspiration from both textual as well as

musical resources. Hagen's Minnesinger is one such musical resource.

We know now that Wagner owned Hagen's Minnesinger and that he

accessed it sometime during the composition of Tannh?user. The next logical

step is to see whether Wagner may have incorporated into the opera anything that he might have seen in Hagen's many musical examples. There is no 19. Mertens, p.240.

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 23

24 Wagner's access to

Minnesinger melodies prior to

completing Tannh?user

Fig.3a: Page 767 in the fourth volume of Hagen's

Minnesinger. This first melody featured in the

book is attributed to Heinrich von Ofterdingen and

is reproduced from the Jena Manuscript. Notice

the repeated note E, sung six times in a row near the

beginning.

Fig.3b: Page 768. A diplomatic facsimile of a folio from

the Wiener Manuscript. While the notation may look

foreign to some readers, and I imagine that Wagner

would be included in that group, the many instances of

repeated-note figures on this page certainly attract the

onlooker's attention.

better place to turn to than the Song Contest Scene itself, the one scene that

contains several diegetic songs intoned by four real Minnesingers: Wolfram,

Tannh?user, Walter von der Vogelweide, and Biterolf.

Although the melodies of Walter and Biterolf are absent from the volume, music attributed to Wolfram and Tannh?user is included in Minnesinger. There is no direct copying of melodies from either the real Wolfram or Tann

h?user, but we would not expect to see this anyway. What is far more inte

resting is that even a cursory examination of all the melodies in Minnesinger reveals the seemingly endless presence of what I will call a repeated note

(figs.3a?e), the same pitch sung in succession often in groupings of three,

although there are some instances where the pitch will be repeated for four,

five, six, even seven times in a row. I have heard Minnesinger scholars occa

sionally refer to this feature as a reciting note, but that label applies to a

specific feature of chant, and at this point, I do not want to suggest that

Minnesinger melodies are direct descendants of plainsong. Indeed, a major difference between the two repertories is that in chant melodies, the reciting note serves as a plateau in the line and tends to be invoked in the middle,

Mla$???a^m ."^BSMS^*^^^??

iiiaf?^^???^*^^"

Fig.3c: Page 775. A diplomatie facsimile of the first song in the Jena Manuscript. The repeated

notes on this page come in groups of three, four, and five.

0M?m$>

Fig.3d: Page 797. This song attributed to 'Der Tanhuser'

includes an abundance of repeated notes.

whereas, in Minnesinger melodies, the repeated note is more often than not

heard near the start of the melody or at the beginning of a new line of text.

As it turns out, the Jena Manuscript, from which Hagen draws the

majority of his musical examples, is not the only manuscript that depicts

repeated notes in the Minnesinger melodies. The examples from the other

manuscripts included in Hagen's anthology also depict the presence of the

repeated note, and in fact, if one looks at a modern edition of really any

Minnesinger manuscript, one will notice time and time again that repeated notes saturate the music. Undeniably, the repeated note appears to have been

a recurring feature in the Minnesinger repertory, and it is the sheer frequency of the repeated note that seems to distinguish these monophonie melodies

from those of the troubadours and trouv?res, the Minnesinger's French

counterparts.

Granted, notes repeat themselves all over this opera, and quite frankly, one would have a difficult time trying to find any composition from any time

period that does not contain repeated notes. However, in the Song Contest

scene, act 2 scene 4, Wagner manipulates this basic feature of the

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 2j

20 Wagner 's access to Minnesinger melodies prior

to completing

Tannh?user

Fig.3e: Page 921. A slightly later notation from a different

manuscript depicts the frequent presence of three-, four-, and five-note repeated-note groupings in music attributed

to Wolfram, with lyrics attributed to the Nuremberg

Meistersinger.

IJlffPiiiliil^^

Fig.3f: Page 924. Notice the seven-note repeated note on

the eighth staff as well as the five-note repeated note on

the ninth stave on the left-hand side of this page.

Minnesinger repertory, attributing extramusical significance to the repeated note figure.

The many songs in this particular scene, beginning with Wolfram's first

song, represent some of the earliest examples in Wagner of Sprechgesang,

admittedly a somewhat anachronistic term, but far less polemical than the

vague catch-all, 'arioso'. Regardless of what we actually call this unique,

semi-declamatory style, it is clear that Wagner is deliberately trying to

distinguish it from French and Italian vocal practices. In fact, in his perform ance notes for the opera, Wagner instructs the musical director not to treat

these seemingly recitative-like passages as one would an Italian recitative,

making it explicitly clear that he never intended to leave the rhythm of the

notes to the performers.20 Wagner also insisted that despite the visual

simplicity of the music, 'Wolfram should not think the music easy, especially his first song in the Singer's-tourney. It will demand a phrasing throughout with the most sensitive care [...]. [He must] pitch the voice to that variety of

expression which alone can give this piece the right effect.' Obviously,

20. Richard Wagner: 'On the

performing of Tannh?user

(1852)', m Judaism in Music

and others essays, trans.

William Ashton Ellis

(Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1995),

pp.167-205.

Wagner held this particular scene very close to his heart, and thus, it would

seem to make sense that he would want to incorporate some sort of semiotic

device here.

In the Song Contest scene, it is my belief that the repeated note is meant

to symbolise the notion of 'medievalism,' most strongly embodied in the

character and diegetic music of Wolfram von Eschenbach. It is also intended

to contrast sharply with the angular lines of Tannh?user's songs and the

passionate 'romanticism' that runs through his veins. If my assertion is

correct, then Wagner made this connection because of his access to Hagen's

Minnesinger and its countless depictions of repeated-note figures in the

music of these medieval German composers. To most accurately reflect the manner in which the repeated notes are

invoked in the original manuscripts, in the Song Contest scene, a repeated note figure will be defined as follows: (i) The pitch must be repeated at least

three times in a row; (2) there must be no rests to break up the repetition; and

(3) the notes must be sustained long enough so that they are perceptible to an

audience. As we will soon see, the majority of the repeated-note figures in

the Song Contest occur at the start of a new line of text, just as they do in the

real Minnesinger melodies.

Ex. 1 shows the vocal line of Wolfram's first song. The libretto speaks to

the purity of love, and this serene imagery is reflected in the music. The song is extremely diatonic, the tempo is slow, the vocal range not too demanding, and the dynamic marking rather soft. A quick scan reveals that the repeated note is invoked ten times during the course of the song. Six of those instances

occur at the start of a new line of text.

It would be premature to chalk this up to mere coincidence, for one cannot

deny the clever way in which Wagner handles the repeated note during the

remainder of the Song Contest: in both the Original Dresden version from

1845 and the standard Second Dresden version from 1847, after Wolfram

sings his song, Tannh?user chimes in with a brief rebuttal containing four

utterances of the repeated-note figure. All four cases occur at the start of a

new line of text. The significant drop in frequency of the repeated note

suggests that, even this early in the contest, our two heroes are diametrically

opposed on a musical level in addition to a textual level.

Walther follows Tannh?user's inappropriate outburst with a more

appealing song echoing the sentiments of Wolfram. In this song, the

repeated-note frequency has increased to six, with four instances at the start

of a new line of text. Soon enough, the raucous Tannh?user comes roaring back with another tirade, this one containing five repeated-note figures, all

of which occur at the beginning of a new line of libretto. For three

consecutive songs then, the repeated note has been hovering at pretty much

the same level of frequency, half-way between the abundance of repeated

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 27

28 Wagner's access to Minnesinger melodies prior to completing Tannh?user

notes in Wolfram's first song and no repeated notes at all. But after

Tannh?user's third song, the music slowly but surely becomes more and

more frantic, and so when Biterolf finally gets a chance to try his luck at the

contest, the absence of the repeated-note figure is evident. It occurs only

once, within the middle of a line no less.

The tides are clearly changing and Tannh?user is getting into the minds of

the other Minnesingers as well as the onlookers. Tannh?user replies to

Biterolf's love praises with a brief, but blasphemous, verse containing, yet

again, only one repeated note. Medievalism is being squashed by roman

ticism, and Wolfram is its last hope. His second song is considerably different

from his first song. By this point, the crowd has been so shocked and appalled

by Tannh?user's racy lyrics that they are close to drawing their weapons. Wolfram's second song is thus an attempt to calm the crowd down, but the

presence of the repeating note is now ephemeral, as it seems to get swallowed

up almost immediately by the increasing orchestral forces, hints of chro

maticism, and an expanded vocal range, as if Tannh?user, in the composer's mind at least, is emerging victorious. The new complexities that highlight

Wolfram's second song represent Tannh?user and his love for Venus, since

we see these characteristics fully manifested in Tannh?user's final outburst

(ex.2).

In this song, which puts a firm damper on the contest, the repeated-note

figure is non-existent. Yes, three very short notes do repeat themselves right near the end of the song, but they go by so quickly that they are virtually

imperceptible. Throughout the Song Contest, Wagner has been showing us a disparity between the quintessentially medieval Wolfram, whom the

composer describes in the performing instructions to the opera as pre

eminently 'Poet and Artist', and the Romantic hero Tannh?user, whom

Wagner states triumphantly is 'before all Man'.21

Fig.4 summarises my above arguments and depicts the presence of the

repeated note in all the diegetic songs of the contest as they appear in the 1847

Dresden version and the revised Paris version from 1861. The major diffe

rence in the Paris version is that Walther loses his solo altogether, but instead

of also eliminating Tannh?user's response to Walther, Wagner now replaces Tannh?user's initial response to Wolfram with the music used to respond to

Walther in the Dresden version. It gets more interesting though: while the

melody on a first listen sounds virtually identical to the 1845 version, Wagner has done something noteworthy to the repeated note. In the Dresden ver

sion, the repeated note appears five times in Tannh?user's response to

Wolfram and four times in his response to Walther. In the Paris version, that

once gradual loss of repeated notes no longer exists. The initial response to

Wolfram now contains only three repeated-note figures. Thus, the drop in

repeated-note frequency from the first to the second song has increased,

w.f r r ir >pr r ir r ir r - ir r ?|f f r r i^=r=

Blick ich um - her indie-sem ed - len Krei-se, welch ho - her An-blick macht mein Herz er

^ m ri' Mr r ir r - if r if r - u rr g s gl?hn! So viel der Held-en, tap-fer, deutsch und wei-se, ein stolz - er

?J r \r p r pif - p r r p?r p r >pir prr ^ Eich -

wald, herr - lich,fr?sch und gr?n; und hold und tu -

gend-sam er-blick ichFrau-en,

V r r if w i r p^a ^ r r r ir r ir^

lieb - li-cher Bl? - then d?f - te-reich-ster Kranz. Es wird der Blick wohl trun - kenmir vom

Schau- en, mein Lied ver-stummt vor sol-cher An - muth Glanz. Da blick ich

w.r > r ir M* r ir p?r PFif r 11 'r r* auf zu ei - nemnur der S ter- ne, der andern Him -

mel, der mich blen-det, steht:

%k- > r ir p r r ir r ir r ' f ? >' r 'r r r r es sam-melt sich mein Geist aus je

- der Fer - ne, an -

dach-tig sinkt die See

le im Ge-bet. Und sieh, mir zei - get sich ein Wun - der-bron-nen in

den mein Geist voll ho-henStan-nen's blickt; aus ihm er sch?p

- fet gna-den-rei-che Won- nen,

durchdie mein Herz er na - men-los er-quiekt. Und nim - mer m?cht'ich die - sen

Ex.i: Wolfram's first song from Tannh?user, act 2 scene 4. A three-note repeated note begins this diegetic song, immediately followed by a six-note repeated note.

Throughout this first song, repeated-note figures can be heard no

fewer than ten times.

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 2<)

30 Wagner 's access to Minnesinger melodies prior to completing Tannh?user

W

w'- r ir r m f f if r r ? w

rir > r ̂ ^ Bron - nen trii-ben, be - ruh - ren nicht den Quell mit frev - lern Muth, in An -

be-tung

mi r rir Mr r 7p'r r ir p r r ir r ig m?cht' ichmich op

- fernd ? - ben, ver-gies

- sen froh mein letz- tes Her - zens-Blut!

m- i r P r r ii- r ^ Ihr Ed - len m?cht' in die - sen Wor - ten le - sen

^m r r \? r if

rs Er setzt sich.

r if r ? wie ich er - kenn' der Lie - be rein - stes We - sen.

Ex. i continued

Dir Got-tinder Lie - be, soll mein Lied er - t? -

nen, ge - sun -

gen_ laut sei_

jetzt dein Preis von mir! Dein s? - sser_ Reiz ist Quel-le al - les Sch? - nen, und

4'iy^rrri'ir r r ir cr r-i4f-i r ir nr (jtt?^m

des_ hol - de Wun-der_ stammt von dir! Wer dich mit Gluth in_ sei-ne Ar - me ge

^|f,r rr if" r ir cxxriT- n r r ir ? r ir r^p *?

schlo - ssen, was Lie - be ist, kennte_ der, nur der al - lein! Arm - sel' ge, die ihr Lie

^???f r Eiry > r fr > 'OMpg'r r T if r fr1

be nie ge-no-ssen, zieht hin, zieht_ in den Berg der Ve nus ein!

Ex.2: Tannh?user's first song from Tannh?user, act 2 scene 4. In this last song of the contest, the repeated note has been

eliminated.

Fig4: The presence of repeated notes in the Song Contest scene from the 1847 'Second Dresden' version and the 1861

'Paris' version of Tannh?user. The first row indicates the repeated-note frequency in the 'Dresden' version. The second row indicates how many repeated

notes occurred at the start of a new line of text in the 'Dresden' version. Row three

depicts the repeated-note frequency in the 'Paris' version, and row four shows the number of times the repeated note

starts a new line of libretto in the 'Paris' version.

especially with regards to the Strong' repeated notes which occur at the start

of a new line of text. In this post- Tristan version of the opera, Wagner is

trying to show an even greater disparity between Wolfram and Tannh?user

right at the onset of the contest.

When the Song Contest first begins, Wolfram's medievalism

is undoubtedly the dominant force in the room, but only a short

time later, Wolfram, along with his medieval repeated note, is

squashed by Tannh?user's grand romantic persona. Sceptics may argue that

I am stretching things too far in the hopes of making a point, but is it not

possible that Wagner, while sifting through source material for Tannh?user

(an opera about Minnesingers) and coming across Hagen's Minnesinger (the

only source in his library collection that contained actual Minnesinger music,

by the way), noticed that this repeated-note figure was a hallmark of the

Minnesinger repertory, and disguised a way to incorporate it into his favou

rite scene in the opera? For the reader still shaking his head, let me leave him with this tantalising

proposal: what if Hagen's Minnesinger was indeed the mysterious 'Volks

buch' that Wagner alludes to in both his essay A communication to friends and

in his autobiography as being the primary source for Tannh?user, and which

no one has yet been able to identify?

Larry Bomback is a PhD candidate in historical musicology at the Graduate

Center of the City University of New York. His research focuses on Wagners

operas and American musical theatre. His article on Irving Berlin 9s Music Box

Revues was recently published in the Canadian journal Musicological

Explorations. He has presented papers and lectures at McGill University,

Haverford College, the University of Portsmouth, and the Graduate Center.

THE MUSICAL TIMES Autumn 2006 31