Manuscript Sources for Minnesang

The three main manuscript sources for Minnesang are:

A: The so-called "Kleine Heidelberger Liederhandschrift," in the library of the University of Heidelberg.
B: The "Weingartner" Liederhandschrift, in the Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart.
C: The famous "Manesse" manuscript (named for the Manesse family in Switzerland, who formerly owned it); also called the "Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift," also now in the library of the University of Heidelberg.

None of these manuscripts contain any music for the songs found in them, but there are manuscripts that do contain music. These are of three sorts:

• Manuscripts that contain texts by Minnesinger, with musical notation attributed to the same poets.


• Manuscripts in which melodies are attributed to Minnesinger, even though the texts are by others.


• Manuscripts containing contrafactures which can be considered highly probable. (A contrafacture is a melody borrowed from another song.)

Of these the most important are those that offer texts and music by the same person. Two kinds of musical notation are found: real notes, from which we can determine the melody of a song, but with no indication of the rhythm, and staffless neumes, symbols which serve as memory aids to a performer who already knows the song, but tell only where the melody goes up or down in pitch, and how many notes are sung on each syllable.

The manuscripts that contain notes are:

J: The Jena manuscript, containing a song by Spervogel.
Z: The Münster Fragment, found in the Staatsarchiv in Münster in 1910, and containing 26 strophes or parts of strophes, one of which has the complete melody of Walther von der Vogelweide's Palästinalied.

The manuscripts that contain staffless neumes are:

M: The "Carmina Burana" manuscript, containing songs attributed to Reinmar, Dietmar, Heinrich von Morungen and Walther von der Vogelweide.
N: The Kremsmünster manuscript, in the library of the monastery in Kremsmünster in Austria. It contains seven strophes of a German song attributed in other collections to Walther von der Vogelweide.

This page will be expanded by participants in the course.

Influences	Poets	Manuscripts	Form	Development	Sociology	Performance
	Dr. James McMahon	Culpeper's CTC Program			Kevin Smith