Ansbach
Ansbach is a city in the German state of Bavaria. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is 25 miles southwest of Nuremberg and 90 miles north of Munich, on the Fränkische Rezat, a tributary of the Main river. In 2004, its population was 40,723. Developed in the 8th century as a Benedictine monastery, it became the seat of the Hohenzollern family in 1331. In 1460, the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach lived here; the city has a castle known as Margrafen–Schloss, built between 1704–1738. It was not badly damaged during the World Wars and hence retains its original historical baroque sheen. Ansbach is now home to the Ansbach University of Applied Sciences; the city has connections via autobahn A6 and highways B13 and B14. Ansbach station is on the Nürnberg–Crailsheim and Treuchtlingen–Würzburg railways and is the terminus of line S4 of the Nuremberg S-Bahn. Ansbach was called Onoltesbach, a term composed of three parts; the individual word elements are "Onold", the Suffix "-es" and the Old High German expression "pah" or "bach".
The name of the city has changed throughout the centuries into Onoltespah, Onoldsbach, Onelspach and Ansbach. It was formerly known as Anspach. According to folklore, towards the end of the 7th century a group of Franconian peasants and their families went up into the wilderness to found a new settlement, their leader Onold led them to an area called the "Rezattal". This is where they founded the "Urhöfe". More settlers, such as the "Winden-Tribe" came, the farms grew into a small village. Many villages around Ansbach were founded by the "Winden" during that period. A Benedictine monastery was established there around 748 by the Frankish noble St Gumbertus; the adjoining village of Onoltesbach is first noticed as a proper town in 1221. The counts of Öttingen ruled over Ansbach until the Hohenzollern burgrave of Nürnberg took over in 1331; the Hohenzollerns made Ansbach the seat of their dynasty until their acquisition of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415. After the 1440 death of Frederick I, a cadet branch of the family established itself as the margraves of Ansbach.
George the Pious introduced the Protestant Reformation to Ansbach in 1528, leading to the secularization of Gumbertus Abbey in 1563. The Markgrafenschloß was built between 1704–1738, its gardens continued to be a notable attraction into the 19th century. In 1791, the last margrave sold his realm to the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1796, the Duke of Zweibrücken, Maximilian Joseph — the future Bavarian king Max I Joseph — was exiled to Ansbach after Zweibrücken had been taken by the French. In Ansbach, Maximilian von Montgelas wrote an elaborate concept for the future political organization of Bavaria, known as the Ansbacher Mémoire. Napoleon forced Prussia to cede Ansbach and its principality to Bavaria in the Franco-Prussian treaty of alliance signed at Schönbrunn Palace on 15 December 1805 at the end of the Third Coalition; the act was confirmed by the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Ansbach became the capital of the circle of Middle Franconia following the unification of Germany. Jewish families were resident in Ansbach from at least the end of the 18th century.
They set up a Jewish Cemetery in the Ruglaender Strasse, vandalised and razed under the Nazi regime in the Kristallnacht. It was repaired in 1946. A plaque on the wall of the cemetery commemorates these events; the Jewish Congregation built its synagogue at No 3 Rosenbadstrasse, but it too was damaged by the SA, though it was not burnt down for fear of damaging the neighbouring buildings. It serves today as a "Symbolic House of God". A plaque in the entrance serves as a memorial to the synagogue and to Jewish residents who were murdered during the Holocaust. In 1940, at least 500 patients were deported from the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Ansbach to the extermination facilities Sonnenstein and Hartheim which were disguised as psychiatric institutions, as part of the Action T4 euthanasia action, they were gassed there. At the clinic in Ansbach itself, around 50 intellectually disabled children were injected with the drug Luminal and killed that way. A plaque was erected in their memory in 1988 in the local hospital at No. 38 Feuchtwangerstrasse.
During World War II, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp was located here. During the Second World War the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht had bases here; the nearby airbase was the home station for the I/KG53 operating 38 Heinkel He 111 bombers. On 1 September 1939 this unit was one of the many that participated in the attack on Poland that started the war. All of its bridges were destroyed during the course of the war. During the Western Allied invasion of Germany in April 1945, the airfield was seized by the United States Third Army, used by the USAAF 354th Fighter Group which flew P-47 Thunderbolts from the aerodrome from late April until the German capitulation on 7 May 1945. At the end of the war, 19-year-old student Robert Limpert tried to get the town to surrender to the US Forces without a fight, he was betrayed by Hitler Youth and was hung from the portal of the City H
Minnesang
Minnesang was a tradition of lyric- and song-writing in Germany that flourished in the Middle High German period. This period of medieval German literature continued into the 14th. People who wrote and performed Minnesang were known as Minnesänger, a single song was called a Minnelied; the name derives from minne, the Middle High German word for love, as, Minnesang's main subject. The Minnesänger were similar to the Provençal troubadours and northern French trouvères in that they wrote love poetry in the tradition of courtly love in the High Middle Ages. In the absence of reliable biographical information, there has been debate about the social status of the Minnesänger; some belonged to the higher nobility – the 14th century Codex Manesse includes songs by dukes, counts and the Emperor Henry VI. Some Minnesänger, as indicated by the title Meister, were educated commoners, such as Meister Konrad von Würzburg, it is thought that many were ministeriales, that is, members of a class of lower nobility, vassals of the great lords.
Broadly speaking, the Minnesänger were writing and performing for their own social class at court, should be thought of as courtiers rather than professional hired musicians. Friedrich von Hausen, for example, was part of the entourage of Friedrich Barbarossa, died on crusade; as a reward for his service, Walther von der Vogelweide was given a fief by the Emperor Frederick II. Several of the best known Minnesänger are noted for their epic poetry, among them Heinrich von Veldeke, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue; the earliest texts date from 1150, the earliest named Minnesänger are Der von Kürenberg and Dietmar von Aist writing in a native German tradition in the third quarter of the 12th century. This is referred to as the Danubian tradition. From around 1170, German lyric poets came under the influence of the Provençal troubadours and the French trouvères; this is most obvious in the adoption of the strophic form of the canzone, at its most basic a seven-line strophe with the rhyme scheme ab|ab|cxc, a musical AAB structure, but capable of many variations.
A number of songs from this period match trouvère originals in form, indicating that the German text could have been sung to an French tune, likely where there are significant commonalities of content. Such songs are termed contrafacta. For example, Friedrich von Hausen's "Ich denke underwilen" is regarded as a contrafactum of Guiot de Provins's "Ma joie premeraine". By around 1190, the German poets began to break free of Franco-Provençal influence; this period is regarded as the period of Classical Minnesang with Albrecht von Johansdorf, Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau developing new themes and forms, reaching its culmination in Walther von der Vogelweide, regarded both in the Middle Ages and in the present day as the greatest of the Minnesänger. The Minnesang, from around 1230, is marked by a partial turning away from the refined ethos of classical minnesang and by elaborate formal developments; the most notable of these Minnesänger, Neidhart von Reuental introduces characters from lower social classes and aims for humorous effects.
Only a small number of Minnelied melodies have survived to the present day in manuscripts dating from the 15th century or which may present the songs in a form other than the original one. Additionally, it is rather difficult to interpret the musical notation used to write them down. Although the contour of the melody can be made out, the rhythm of the song is hard to fathom. There are a number of recordings of Minnesang using the original melodies, as well as Rock groups such as Ougenweide performing songs with modern instruments. In the 15th century, Minnesang gave way to the tradition of the Meistersänger; the two traditions are quite different, however. At least two operas have been written about the Minnesang tradition: Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser and Richard Strauss' Guntram. Danubian LyricDietmar von Aist Der von Kürenberg Meinloh von SevelingenEarly Courtly LyricFriedrich von Hausen Kaiser Heinrich VI Heinrich von Veldeke SpervogelClassical MinnesangAlbrecht von Johansdorf Bernger von Horheim Gottfried von Strassburg Hartmann von Aue Heinrich von Morungen Reinmar von Hagenau Walther von der Vogelweide Wolfram von EschenbachLater Minnesang 13th century Reinmar von Brennenberg der Regenboge Friedrich von Sonnenburg Gottfried von Neifen Heinrich von Meissen Hugo von Montfort Konrad von Würzburg Neidhart von Reuental Otto von Botenlauben Reinmar von Zweter Süßkind von Trimberg Der Tannhäuser Ulrich von Liechtenstein Walther von Klingen Later Minnesang 14th centuryJohannes Hadlaub Muskatblüt Oswald von Wolkenstein The following love poem, of unknown authorship, is found in a Latin codex of the 12th century from the Tegernsee Abbey.
The standard collections are 12th and early 13th Century Minnesang: H. Moser, H. Tervooren, Des Minnesangs Frühling. Vol. I: Texts, 38th edn ISBN 3-7776-0448-8 Vol II: Editorial Principles, Manuscripts, Notes, 36th edn ISBN 3-7776-0331-7 Vol III: Commentaries ISBN 3-7776-0368-6 13th Century Minnesang after Walther von der Vogelweide: Carl v. Kraus, G. Kornrumpf, Deutsche Liederdichter des 13. Jahrhunderts ISBN 3-484-10284-5. 14th and 15th cen
Perceval, the Story of the Grail
Perceval, the Story of the Grail is the unfinished fifth romance of Chrétien de Troyes, who lived from around 1130 to the early 1190s, is dedicated to Chrétien's patron Philip I, Count of Flanders. It was written in Old French during the 1180s or 1190s and left unfinished because of the death of either Philip in 1191, while crusading at Acre, or Chrétien himself. Chrétien claimed to be working from a source given to him by Philip; the poem relates the adventures and growing pains of the young knight Perceval, but the story breaks off. There follows an adventure of Gawain of similar length that remains incomplete. There are some 9,000 lines in total, whereas Chrétien's other romances exceed 7,000 lines. Authors added 54,000 more lines in what are known collectively as the Four Continuations. Perceval is the earliest recorded account of what was to become the Quest for the Holy Grail but describes only a golden grail in the central scene, does not call it "holy," and treats a lance, appearing at the same time, as significant.
The poem opens with Perceval, whose mother has raised him apart from civilization in the forests of Wales. While out riding one day, he encounters a group of knights and realizes he wants to be one. Despite his mother's objections, the boy heads to King Arthur's court, where a young girl predicts greatness for him. Sir Kay taunts him and slaps the girl, but Perceval amazes everyone by killing a knight, troubling King Arthur and taking his vermilion armor, he sets out for adventure. He trains under the experienced Gornemant falls in love with and rescues Gornemant's niece Blanchefleur. Perceval captures her assailants and sends them to King Arthur's court to proclaim Perceval's vow of revenge on Sir Kay. Perceval remembers that his mother fainted when he went off to become a knight, goes to visit her. During his journey, he comes across the Fisher King fishing in a boat on a river, who invites him to stay at his castle. While there, Perceval witnesses a strange procession in which young men and women carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another.
First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance two boys carrying candelabra. A beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or grail, passing before him at each course of the meal. Perceval, trained by his guardian Gornemant not to talk too much, remains silent through all of this, he resumes his journey home. He encounters a girl in mourning, who admonishes him for not asking about the grail, as that would have healed the wounded king, he learns that his mother has died. Perceval captures another knight and sends him to King Arthur's court with the same message as before. King Arthur sets out to find Perceval and, upon finding him, attempts to convince him to join the court. Perceval unknowingly challenges Sir Kay to a fight, in which he breaks Sir Kay's arm and exacts his revenge. Perceval agrees to join the court, but soon after a loathly lady enters and admonishes Perceval once again for failing to ask the Fisher King whom the grail served. No more is heard of Perceval except in a short passage, in which a hermit explains that the grail contains a single mass-wafer that miraculously sustains the Fisher King’s wounded father.
The loathly lady announces other quests that the Knights of the Round Table proceed to take up and the remainder of the poem deals with Arthur's nephew and best knight Gawain, challenged to a duel by a knight who claims Gawain had slain his lord. Gawain offers a contrast and complement to Perceval's naiveté as a courtly knight having to function in un-courtly settings. An important episode is Gawain's liberation of a castle whose inhabitants include his long-lost mother and grandmother as well as his sister Clarissant, whose existence was unknown to him; this tale breaks off unfinished. Over the following 50 years four different poets took up the challenge left by Chrétien and continued the adventures of Perceval and Gawain; the First Continuation added 9,500 to 19,600 lines to the romance. It was once attributed to Wauchier de Denain, is still sometimes called the Pseudo-Wauchier Continuation for that reason, it exists in a short, a mixed, a long version. Roger Sherman Loomis believed that the short version, added to an existing Perceval manuscript ten or twenty years represents a version of the story, independent of Chrétien's.
The First Continuation picks up the narrative of Gawain's adventures where Chrétien left off: his mother and grandmother are reunited with Arthur and Gawain's sister Clarissant marries Guiromelant. In the long version, Gawain opposes the marriage and rides off in anger. After further adventures he helps him besiege a rebel's castle; the First Continuation is notable for its cavalier approach to the narrative agenda set by Chrétien. In particular it includes a independent romance, which in the long version spans over 6000 lines: The Livre de Caradoc, starring Arthur's knight Caradoc, explains how the hero got his nickname "Briefbras", or "Short Arm". All versions of the First Continuation describe Gawain's visit to a Grail castle quite unlike Chrétien's, a vividly imagined scene that introduces the motif of a broken sword that can only be mended by the hero destined to heal the Fisher King and his lands. Gawain is not this hero and he fails; the final episode recounts the misadventures of Gawain's brother Guer
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon, surcoat, or tabard. The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement which in its whole consists of shield, supporters and motto. A coat of arms is traditionally unique to an individual person, state, organization or corporation; the Roll of Arms is a collection of many coats of arms, since the early Modern Age centuries it has been a source of information for public showing and tracing the membership of a noble family, therefore its genealogy across time. The ancient Greek hoplites used individual insignia on their shields; the ancient Romans used similar insignia on their shields. Heraldic designs came into general use among western nobility in the 12th century. Systematic, heritable heraldry had developed by the beginning of the 13th century. Who had a right to use arms, by law or social convention, varied to some degree between countries. Early heraldic designs were personal. Arms become hereditary by the end of the 12th century, in England by King Richard I during the Third Crusade.
Burgher arms are used in Northern Italy in the second half of the 13th century, in the Holy Roman Empire by the mid 14th century. In the late medieval period, use of arms spread to the clergy, to towns as civic identifiers, to royally chartered organizations such as universities and trading companies; the arts of vexillology and heraldry are related. The term coat of arms itself in origin refers to the surcoat with heraldic designs worn by combattants in the knightly tournament, in Old French cote a armer; the sense is transferred to the heraldic design itself in the mid-14th century. Despite no widespread regulation, heraldry has remained consistent across Europe, where tradition alone has governed the design and use of arms; some nations, like England and Scotland, still maintain the same heraldic authorities which have traditionally granted and regulated arms for centuries and continue to do so in the present day. In England, for example, the granting of arms has been controlled by the College of Arms.
Unlike seals and other general emblems, heraldic "achievements" have a formal description called a blazon, which uses vocabulary that allows for consistency in heraldic depictions. In the present day, coats of arms are still in use by a variety of institutions and individuals: for example, many European cities and universities have guidelines on how their coats of arms may be used, protect their use as trademarks. Many societies exist that aid in the design and registration of personal arms. Heraldry has been compared to modern corporate logos; the French system of heraldry influenced the British and Western European systems. Much of the terminology and classifications are taken from it. However, with the fall of the French monarchy there is not a Fons Honorum to enforce heraldic law; the French Republics that followed have either affirmed pre-existing titles and honors or vigorously opposed noble privilege. Coats of arms are considered an intellectual property of municipal body. Assumed arms are considered valid unless they can be proved in court to copy that of an earlier holder.
In the heraldic traditions of England and Scotland, an individual, rather than a family, had a coat of arms. In those traditions coats of arms are legal property transmitted from father to son. Undifferenced arms are used only by one person at any given time. Other descendants of the original bearer could bear the ancestral arms only with some difference: a colour change or the addition of a distinguishing charge. One such charge is the label, which in British usage is now always the mark of an heir apparent or an heir presumptive; because of their importance in identification in seals on legal documents, the use of arms was regulated. This has been carried out by heralds and the study of coats of arms is therefore called "heraldry". In time, the use of arms spread from military entities to educational institutes, other establishments. In Scotland, the Lord Lyon King of Arms has criminal jurisdiction to control the use of arms. In England, Northern Ireland and Wales the use of arms is a matter of civil law and regulated by the College of Arms and the High Court of Chivalry.
In reference to a dispute over the exercise of authority over the Officers of Arms in England, Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey, Lord Privy Seal, declared on 16 June 1673 that the powers of the Earl Marshal were "to order and determine all matters touching arms, ensigns of nobility and chivalry. It was further declared that no patents of arms or any ensigns of nobility should be granted and no augmentation, alteration, or addition should be made to arms without the consent of the Earl Marshal. In Ireland the usage and granting of coats of arms was regulated by the Ulster King of Arms from the office's creation in 1552. After Irish independence in 1922 the office was still working out of Dublin Castle; the last Ulster King of Arm
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are taken by singers, but is distinct from musical theater. Such a "work" is a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery and sometimes dance or ballet; the performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Understood as an sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as musical theater, Singspiel and Opéra comique. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style and self-contained arias; the 19th century saw the rise of the continuous music drama. Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, Henry Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century.
In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s; the most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, as well as Die Entführung aus dem Serail, The Magic Flute, landmarks in the German tradition. The first third of the 19th century saw the high point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini all creating works that are still performed, it saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer. The mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera and dominated by Giuseppe Verdi in Italy and Richard Wagner in Germany; the popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss in the early 20th century.
During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas became known to much wider audiences that went beyond the circle of opera fans. Since the invention of radio and television, operas were performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of major opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. Since 2009, complete performances are live streamed; the words of an opera are known as the libretto. Some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti. Traditional opera referred to as "number opera", consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech, aria in which the characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style.
Vocal duets and other ensembles occur, choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique and semi-opera, the recitative is replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, are referred to as arioso; the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. During both the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms, each of, accompanied by a different instrumental ensemble: secco recitative, sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accent of the words, accompanied only by basso continuo, a harpsichord and a cello. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, Wagner revolutionized opera by abolishing all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what Wagner termed "endless melody". Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner's example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake's Progress have bucked the trend.
The changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below. The Italian word opera means "work", both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced; the Italian word derives from the Latin opera, a singular noun meaning "work" and the plural of the noun opus. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Italian word was first used in the sense "composition in which poetry and music are combined" in 1639. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, it was writt
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, defined by its musical accompaniment on a stringed instrument known as a lyre; the term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry: lyrical and epic. Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on stress; the most common meters are as follows: Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable. Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable. In English, this metre is found entirely in lyric poetry. Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed. Dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.
Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables. Some forms have a combination of meters using a different meter for the refrain. For the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry had a precise technical meaning: verse, accompanied by a lyre, cithara, or barbitos; because such works were sung, it was known as melic poetry. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays, the writer of trochaic and iambic verses, the writer of elegies and the writer of epic; the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed worthy of critical study. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus and Pindar. Archaic lyric was characterized by live musical performance; some poets, like Pindar extended the metrical forms to a triad, including strophe and epode. Among the major extant Roman poets of the classical period, only Catullus and Horace wrote lyric poetry, which however was no longer meant to be sung but instead read or recited.
What remained were the forms, the lyric meters of the Greeks adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the Neoteroi who spurned epic poetry following the lead of Callimachus. Instead, they composed brief polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres; the Roman love elegies of Tibullus and Ovid, with their personal phrasing and feeling, may be the thematic ancestor of much medieval, Renaissance and modern lyric poetry, but these works were composed in elegiac couplets and so were not lyric poetry in the ancient sense. During China's Warring States period, the Songs of Chu collected by Qu Yuan and Song Yu defined a new form of poetry that came from the exotic Yangtze Valley, far from the Wei and Yellow River homeland of the traditional four-character verses collected in the Book of Songs; the varying forms of the new Chu ci provided greater latitude of expression. Originating in 10th-century Persian, a ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets that share a rhyme and a refrain.
Formally, it consists of a short lyric composed in a single meter with a single rhyme throughout. The central subject is love. Notable authors include Hafiz, Amir Khusro, Auhadi of Maragheh, Alisher Navoi, Obeid e zakani, Khaqani Shirvani, Farid al-Din Attar, Omar Khayyam, Rudaki; the ghazal was introduced to European poetry in the early 19th century by the Germans Schlegel, Von Hammer-Purgstall, Goethe, who called Hafiz his "twin". Lyric in European literature of the medieval or Renaissance period means a poem written so that it could be set to music—whether or not it was. A poem's particular structure, function, or theme might all vary; the lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and courtly love without reference to the classical past. The troubadors, travelling composers and performers of songs, began to flourish towards the end of the 11th century and were imitated in successive centuries. Trouvères were poet-composers who were contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France.
The first known trouvère was Chrétien de Troyes. The dominant form of German lyric poetry in the period was the minnesang, "a love lyric based on a fictitious relationship between a knight and his high-born lady". Imitating the lyrics of the French troubadours and trouvères, minnesang soon established a distinctive tradition. There was a large body of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. Hebrew singer-poets of the Middle Ages included Yehuda Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Abraham ibn Ezra. In Italy, Petrarch developed the sonnet form pioneered by Dante's Vita Nuova. In 1327, according to the poet, the sight of a woman called Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse. Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere. Laura is in many ways both the culmination of medieval courtly love poetry and the beginning of Renaissance love lyric. A bhajan or kirtan is a Hindu devotional song. Bhajans are simple songs in lyrical language expressing emotions of love for the Divine.
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Johann Jakob Bodmer
Johann Jakob Bodmer was a Swiss author, academic and poet. Born at Greifensee, near Zürich, first studying theology and trying a commercial career, he found his vocation in letters. In 1725 he was appointed professor of Helvetian history at the Carolinum academy in Zürich, a chair which he held for half a century, in 1735 became a member of the Cantonal Council, he died at Zürich in 1783. His major writings are the treatises Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie and Kritische Betrachtungen über die poetischen Gemählde der Dichter, in which he pleaded for the freedom of the imagination from the restriction imposed upon it by French pseudo-classicism. Bodmer's epics Die Sundflutz and Noah are imitations of Klopstock's Messias, his plays are deficient in dramatic qualities, he issued editions of the Minnesingers and part of the Nibelungenlied. He published, in conjunction with Johann Jakob Breitinger and others, Die Discourse der Mahlern, a weekly journal after the model of The Spectator. In it, German poetry was criticised for its servility to French models.
Through his prose translation of Milton's Paradise Lost, he tried to make English literature accessible in Germany. He formed a German literary school in opposition to Johann Christoph Gottsched of Leipzig, with whom he carried on a prolonged controversy. Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Bodmer, Johann Jakob". Encyclopædia Britannica. 4. Cambridge University Press. P. 111. This work in turn cites: T. W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit J. Crüger, J. C. Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger F. Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing Denkschrift zu Bodmers 200. Geburtstag Rines, George Edwin, ed.. "Bodmer, Johann Jakob". Encyclopedia Americana. Publications by and about Johann Jakob Bodmer in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library Library of the World's Best Literature and Modern volume 5, edited by Charles Dudley Warner 1896 Johann Jakob Bodmer entry Works by Johann Jakob Bodmer at LibriVox
