Music Guide Mastersingers

Wagners Oevre holds many musical mysteries. The opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg:

• How do the ideals of the Meistersinger guild appear in music?
• What does the dotted rhythm of many motifs mean?
• What secret lies in the change in Walther's music?

The Mastersingers music guide provides answers. A short synopsis of each scene provides an immediate overview. The leitmotifs and musical design of the work are clearly explained using musical examples. The audio samples make the explanations easy to understand.

Scope

• 64 pages
• 47 sheet music and audio examples, playable in the browser of your smartphone or PC

Reading sample

The masters, however, indignantly reject this proposal as an encroachment on their artistic decision-making sovereignty. Sachs makes another attempt to push through his proposal, in which he develops the nature-rule motif into an art motif:

♫ Example 20: Derivation art motif

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The motif rises high and emphasizes the ideals of art. The beginning is similar to the rule of nature motif and the beginning and the concatenation of the three guild’s ideals motifs are also found in the Mastersingers motif (example 1).

Pogner's motion to allow Walther to audition for admission to the guild is accepted. The knight steps forward and we hear his own motif, which Beckmesser soon caricatures disparagingly:

♫ Example 21: Stolzing, envy and Beckmesser motif

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Knight Stolzing, whose motifs are normally more complex and longer lasting melodies, adopts here the dotted "bourgeois rhythm" in his formal introduction: he would like to be part of the guild in order to be able to win Eva. Beckmesser's envy motif is a bleating diminution. Its second part also occurs alone and is called the Beckmesser motif.

Walther reports that he learned poetry from the 12th century Minnesinger Sir Walter of Vogelweid and the art of singing from the birds. (...)

Samples

To hear all the audio examples click on the image

Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle by Michael Wolgemut (1493)

1. Mastersingers’ motif
2. Chroal of baptism
3. Courtship motif
4. Eva motif
5. Springtime’s behest and passion motif
6. Resentment motif
7. David motif
8. King David motif
9. Competition motif and delight sequence
10. Liveliness motif
11. Excitement trill
12. Derivation singing art motif
13. Derivation cobbler’s labor motif
14. Chalk stroke motif
15. Prentices motif
16. Chaplet motif
17. Guild’s motifs
18. Mid-summer day motif
19. Derivation nature rule motif
20. Derivation art motif
21. Stolzing, envy and Beckmesser motif
22. Vogelweid motif
23. Scorn motif
24. Derivation friendship motif
25. Nuremberg motif
26. Derivation Elder motif
27. Sprimgtime's behest motif
28. Derivation grace motif
29. Derivation hope motif
30. Derivation rejection motif
31. Beckmesser's passion
32. Summer night’s magic motif
33. Lute motif
34. Work lust motif
35. Cobbler song
36. Derivation Cobbler's song
37. Beckmesser's song
38. Beckmesser's courtship motif
39. anger motif
40. beating motif
41. Delusion motif
42. Awake choral
43. Dream motif
44. Prize song (stanza)
45. Prize song (love theme)
46. resignation motif
47. Baptismal verse moti

Order information

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