Volkslied

“ Such are the decadent aspects of the once rich literature of the Middle High German period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Turning now to the more positive side of the literary movement, we have to note a revival of a popular lyric poetry—the Volkslied—which made the futility and artificiality of the Meistergesang more apparent. Never before or since has Germany been able to point to such a rich harvest of popular poetry as is to be seen in the Volkslieder of these two centuries. ”

“ It is an interesting instance of a Volkslied of one country becoming domesticated in the same capacity in another, and also of the extraordinary transformation which the song may undergo in the process. A very loose imitation of the words of this song, beginning 'Schöne Minka ich muss scheiden,' was published by the German poet Ch. A. Tiedge in 1808, and this, with the melody much altered, is now to be found in most collections of German Volkslieder without notice of the Slavonic source. ”

“ We have already seen how the Volkslied became fertilized by the polyphony of church-music. At the same time the music of the mass itself received an important impulse from the Volkslied. The employment of well-known popular song-melodies as canti fermi in sacred contrapuntal compositions had a very beneficial effect upon those works, inasmuch as it introduced a bit of fresh popular life into music just at the moment when it was in danger of degenerating into pedantry and triviality. ”

“ With the exception of the Jodler, which is unique for its exuberance of spirit, the Volkslied is rather reserved and contained in manner. It reflects the serious, contemplative character and the healthy, well-poised temperament of a physically and spiritually strong race.
Song and dance entered largely into the life of mediæval German villages and towns. When village communities depended upon their own resources for work and play, every village had its own musicians. The peasant boys usually played the fiddle, the shepherds the Schalmey, while the flute was hardly less popular. ”

“ They are at their best when they are nearest to the Volkslied, showing the German genius of achieving deep and noble expression in the simplest forms. We may mention especially the Children’s Songs, opus 37, of which the best are the lilting lullaby, Wenn die Kinder schlafen ein, and the moving Gebet zur Nacht. The essential wholesomeness of his talent is shown in the Singspiel, Ein Abenteuer Händels (‘An Adventure of Handel’s) , of which the very simple song, Lied so treu [Pg 256] und herzlich, is typical. ”

“ By popular songs we understand what the Germans call Volkslieder, that is, songs with words composed by members of the people, for the people, handed down by oral tradition, and in style, taste and even incident, common to the people in all European countries. The beauty of these purely popular ballads, their directness and freshness, has made them admired even by the artificial critics of the most artificial periods in literature. ”

“ Equally indirect, as will be seen presently, were the effects produced on it by the genius of Gluck, Haydn, and even of Mozart.
At the period we have now reached, namely the end of the 18th century, a new and popular form of the Kunstlied appeared, and this was the 'volksthümliches Lied.' [113] The decline of the Volkslied during the 17th century has been sometimes attributed to the distracted state of Germany; and certainly the gloomy atmosphere of the Thirty Years War and the desolation of the Palatinate, cannot have been favourable to it. ”

“ C. F. Becker: 'Die Tonwerke des 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert.' Leipzig, 1854.
4. Franz M. Bohme: 'Altdeutsches Liederbuch aus dem 12ten bis zum 17ten Jahrhundert.' Leipzig, 1876. The best work existing on the Volkslied. Has an invaluable preface on the form and the history of the Volkslied, and a very large collection of old melodies, with words, and trustworthy history of each.
5. Franz M. Bohme: 'Volkslieder f. Männerstimmen.'
6. E. de Coussemaker: 'Chants populaires de Flamands de France.' Ghent, 1856. (Many N. German and Flemish Volkslieder being identical, this collection is named.) ”

“ They are simple, naïve and often sad—at any rate they are pleasing.”
German Folk Music The Volkslieder or folk songs of the Germans are the backbone of the great classical and romantic periods of the 18th and 19th centuries which made Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, Wagner and Brahms the music masters of the world. ”

“ The merit of popular melody lies largely in its spontaneity. In German popular melody, from the oldest times, the merit of beauty has been added to that of spontaneity, inasmuch as the Germans, like the Slavs, are naturally musical in a sense in which English-speaking people are not. No German-speaking people would tolerate for a national air such a tune as Yankee Doodle. In the plainest German folk-song may be found spontaneous simplicity without vulgarity. Hence the Volkslied has been available as a source of melodic suggestiveness to German composers. ”

“ Throughout we find singers who in verse or prose chant the national glory, and no episode of importance is without its poetic chronicle or interpretation; the national enthusiasm vents itself in war-song, in satire, in mock-heroics, or in rhyming chronicle. Wandering poets living on the scanty proceeds of their lieder; craftsmen who have taken up the sword; soldiers by profession—these are the bards of the time. Rugged and unpolished sometimes are their verses, for the Middle German is in a transition state, and poetry has long since left courts and descended among the people. ”

“ This state of things is abundantly reflected in the folk-songs of the period, which best reveal the intimate feelings of the people. For it was an age of song everywhere, and especially in Germany. Nobles and knights, burghers and peasants, landsknechts and Swiss soldiers, priests and clerks, lawyers and merchants—all expressed the feelings of their class when they sang; and the folk-songs give us a wonderful picture of the class hatreds which were rending asunder the old conditions of mediæval life, and preparing the way for a new world. ”

“ Don’t you believe that studying history through folk tunes would be fascinating? People today have found out much about the different races and tribal events through them.
It is impossible to find out who wrote the five thousand folk songs of England and the more than five thousand of Russia and of Ireland and all the others, for it was not until the 19th century that folk songs and dances became a serious study. The fact is, that a true folk song doesn’t want to find its composer for it loses its rank as a folk song if its maker should turn up! ”

“ The last type of nationalism in folk song is almost a negative quality, its distinguishing mark being mere simplicity, a simplicity which is affected, or possibly assimilated, by the writer of such a song; for German folk song proper is a made thing, springing not from the people, but from the many composers, both ancient and modern, who have tried their hands in that direction. ”

“ The Bauer, the Handworker, the Sportsman, in short, each and all have their peculiar songs in abundance, which are never out of their mouths. Do all Germans then sing, and sing they everywhere? some one may ask. No, don't fear that you would actually be deafened with singing in Germany. The Bundestag, [32] when it holds its sitting; the Landtag, [33] when it is in debate; the statesman in the business of his office; the learned man writing his dissertation, and many other people, don't sing; in short, people do not sing in their solemn affairs, though the opera makes them do so. ”

“ And how often has the written or spoken word fanned the flame of nationality among downtrodden peoples! The story is the same from land to land and age to age. The soul of a nation in bondage is wrapped around its patriotic literature. Generation after generation of Bohemians, Finns or Poles have drunk at the national fount of poem and song. Within the peasant’s thatched home as in the city abode, the well-worn volume, pregnant with past glory, becomes the beacon of hope. It lights the darkness of oppression’s heaviest hours. ”

“ But beneath the superficial culture of the aristocracy there was the true national life of the common people, the force which has kept Germany one through darkest days and nights and has in the last fifty years brought to fruition such a glorious era of national culture. And it was to the folk-element in German culture that the ‘poet patriots’ were forced to appeal. Heinrich Albert, in setting to music the poems of this group, chose the German folk-song style, rather than that of the Italian aria. ”

“ As to the music, it seems as though every boy and girl in the whole country drew in the spirit of song with the air they breathe. They sing with a love of what they are singing, they play as though the tune were a part of their very selves. Some of the finest musicians have been Germans, and their gifts to the world have been bountiful.
As for soldiers, we know that every man in Germany must stand ready to defend his country. ”

“ Often the melodies are as plain as folk-songs, but always of great nobility. With a few notes the composer reaches our hearts and lifts us at once into a higher region. Other melodies again are as elaborate as a dramatic scene. The accompaniment, inexhaustible in forms, yet never conventional, simple or with great harmonic wealth and peculiar figuration, rivals the singer in expressing the moods of the poem. Of the so-called folk-songs (old German, Swiss, Bohemian, Scotch, Italian, etc.) some are treated most artistically, others with a touching simplicity. ”

“ We would prefer to modify this rule, and say, "Give us the poems which the people make for themselves, and then we shall obtain a clear insight into the national character and learn what customs and laws they are likely to accept or reject." Folk-songs are the intimate expressions of the ideas of the people. What the comic drama is to the cultured, and the music-hall to the ill-educated portions of urban population, the popular song has been, and in some countries still is, to the rural peasantry, a true exponent of their sentiments, though too frequently inaccurate in statements of facts. ”

“ No! the songs of the German students, even when on no higher a theme than wine, and with the bold free-spokenness which is startling to our modes of thinking, are the effusions of the first spirits of their nation, and are sung to some of the finest melodies which ever emanated from that most musical of people. ”

“ The shepherd tending his flock, the fisherman mending his nets, the soldier on the march, the peasant at the plough, has no inducement to sing unless his heart's emotion incite him to it. A true national music is, then, what the Germans call Volksmusik, and, springing from the hearts of the people, it is psychologically one of their best interpreters. ”

“ One point must be very distinctly understood, namely, that what we call harmonization of a melody cannot be admitted as forming any part of folk song. Folk melodies are, without exception, homophonous. This being the case, perhaps my statement that the vital principle of folk music in its best state has nothing in common with nationalism (considered in the usual sense of the word) , will be better understood. ”

“ Approaching modern times, let us see what role was assumed by Music in the tribal life of the early Germanic races. In those times of war excitement, when tribes fought like wild animals, and the war spirit held full sway, the Germans on their march to battle, helmets decorated with the heads of animals, their big bodies clothed in the simple sagum, chanted their war songs, and kept up a rhythmic beating upon their shields. ”

“ Generally speaking, of course, a folk song is not the work of one individual, but of many; it is essentially a local product, that grows with the years, and reflects truly the spirit of the land which gave it birth. Yet, strangely enough, this particular song, though it has all the virtues of its kind—the simplicity, the melody, the descriptive, pastoral, and amorous characteristics of a semi-southern race—is an exception to the general rule. ”

“ What are folk-songs as we know them to-day? The songs which have been taken down from the lips of the peasantry, mostly in very recent years. They owe their preservation to the tenacious memories of country folk through countless generations. In other words, they are traditional.
They are to be found in all nations, savage or civilized, all over the world. And in civilized nations the melodies of folk-song have been little affected by the musical changes which civilization has brought to the art of music. ”

“ Only the German race, with its want of quick instinctive tact, of delicate, sure perception, could have invented the hymn as the Germans and we have it; and our non-German turn for style,—style, of which the very essence is a certain happy fineness and truth of poetical perception,—could not but desert us when our German nature carried us into a kind of composition which can please only when the perception is somewhat blunt. ”

“ Often they are chained together in little groups to prevent them discarding their loads and plunging into the jungle when our pursuit draws near. The German knows the value of song to help the weary miles to pass, and makes the porters chant the songs and choruses dear to the native heart. ”