Two Meisterlieder on the Seven Liberal Arts in MS Berlin germ. quart. 414

Abstract

Hans Sachs, the prolific and popular poet and dramatist, began his first anthology of Meisterlieder (MS Berlin 414), as he says in his preface, als man zalt Anno Salutis 1517 Jar an Dem dag Sancte Margarete der Heiligen Jünckfrawen. This anthology, a thick volume of 479 leaves, contains 399 Meisterlieder without musical notation, and the compiling and copying were probably completed by the end of 1518, when Sachs was 24 years old. No poem in the MS bears a later date. Thirty-one Meistersinger of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are represented by a total of 165 texts. There are 234 Meisterlieder sine nomine, and the poems presented below are among them.¹