Womans Work in Music | Page 8

The evident idea of the Salic law was to allow
woman a marriage portion only, and as soon as she was safely
bestowed upon some neighbouring group of people, neither she nor her
children had any further claim upon the parent group.
Great cruelty was evident in the treatment of female slaves. According
to the laws of Athelstan, if one of these were convicted of theft, she
should in punishment be burned alive by eighty other such slaves. A
similar example of stern discipline is afforded by the ecclesiastical
provision, occurring no less than three times, that, if a woman scourged
her slave to death, she should do penance. It is little wonder that under
these conditions the female slaves would sing in a rather forced manner,
if at all, and the women themselves would hardly indulge in the gentle
art of composing music.
The early Christian Church, too, afforded no encouragement for women
to exert their musical abilities. When the earliest meetings occurred in
the catacombs, the female members of the congregation took their part
in singing the hymns, but, when organized choirs were formed, they
were allowed no place. The singing-schools founded in Rome by the
Popes Sylvester I. and Hilary, at the end of the fourth century, were
devoted solely to the training of male voices. In describing the earlier
music, St. John Chrysostom says: "The psalms which we sing unite all
the voices in one, and the canticles arise harmoniously in unison.
Young and old, rich and poor, women, men, slaves, and citizens, all of
us have formed but one melody together." But the custom of permitting

women to join with men in the singing was abolished by the Synod of
Antioch in the year 379.
In the music of the Celtic and Gaelic races, also, woman had no place.
Their songs, like their lives, were martial in character. The harpists of
Ireland and Wales, and the bagpipers of Scotland, were all men, and
they made strict rules about the admission of new members to their
guilds. Even among the early English minstrels, who devoted their
powers to the milder art of love-songs and Christmas carols, no women
are to be found. The wandering life of these bards and singers was too
rude at first to admit of participation by the gentler sex, and it was only
under more stable conditions of civilization that woman at last gained
the opportunity of showing and developing her talents.
With the advent of chivalry, she found herself at once in a more exalted
position. In this epoch, when cultivated minds began to devote their
energies to other things besides fighting in war and carousing in peace,
music found new and worthier subjects in nature and love and the
beauty of woman. Under the new system she became the arbiter of all
knightly disputes, the queen to whom all obedience was due. From this
extreme worship arose the schools of the Minnesingers and the
Troubadours, who paid her manifold homage in the shape of poetry and
song.
According to the general statements of history, the Minnesingers began
their career in the time of Frederick Barbarossa, of Germany. This
would place their origin in the latter part of the twelfth century. Yet it is
a strange fact that Heinrich of Veldig, usually accounted the pioneer in
this new school of singing, utters a complaint about the loss of the good
old times, and bewails the decay of the true greatness of the art to
which he devoted himself. The original song in which he expresses this
sentiment is still extant, and the particular stanza in question runs as
follows:
"Do man der rehten minne pflag Da pflag man ouch der ehren; Nu mag
man naht und tag Die boesen sitte leren; Swer dis nu siht, und jens do
sach, O we! was der nu clagen mag Tugende wend sich nu verkehren."

That many of the early songs of the Minnesingers have been preserved
is due to the forethought of Rüdiger of Manesse, a public officer of
Zurich in the fourteenth century. He made a thorough collection of all
specimens of the style of the Minnesingers, and many subsequent
works, such as that of Von Der Hagen, are based upon his researches.
The language ordinarily used by the Minnesingers was that of Suabia,
which was that employed at the imperial and many lesser courts of
Germany. They used it with a skill and delicacy which was generally
far superior to the style of the Troubadours. In performing their works,
they did not, like their western brethren, have recourse to hired
accompanists, or Jongleurs, but supported the vocal part by playing on
a small viol. The Jongleurs were essentially a French institution, and no
class of musicians similar to them existed in Germany. The
Minnesingers,