ABSTRACT
As research has shown, the constitution of a musical genre is never a one-dimensional or linear procedure. Rather, it is a multi-faceted process which depends on numerous conditioning factors and influences. This is unquestionably true when tracing the origins and history of the fifteenth-century German tenor lied. While research on the genre has brought to light many valuable insights, 1 it is still very difficult to acquire a comprehensive picture as to how the tenor lied came into being, even when one examines all of its musical sources and, in turn, asks of them countless questions. That such a problem still exists could, in part, be attributed to the fact that scholars have yet to thoroughly focus their attention on the earlier musical items from which the tenor lied might have emerged. Moreover, no one - as far as I can see - has seriously attempted to study the history of the genre within the greater cultural context within which it was created. In this essay, I shall attempt to reconstruct the origins of the fifteenth-century tenor lied by bringing together evidence culled not only from musical sources, but also literary and socio-economic ones as well. While such an approach will shed new light on the subject, it is evident that many of my conclusions will have to be regarded as only tentative until more detailed studies are conducted. 2
I Regardless of what aspect of fifteenth-century German music one wishes to study, the sources are rather problematic, especially when compared to the complex of manuscripts which have survived from France and Italy at this time. Admittedly,
175 The German tenor lied: drafting the history of a genre we do possess a few substantial manuscripts of German origin as well as several smaller or fragmentary ones. Yet it is reasonably clear that these sources represent only a small fraction of what was at one time extant and has since been lost. Indeed, I would even venture to say that we have probably lost more German sources from this time than from any other time or place in early music history. This is clearly apparent when one turns to the extant sources for the polyphonic German tenor lied and, in turn, attempts to reconstruct the chain of events which led to its birth. Certainly, with the appearance of printed collections of polyphonic German tenor lieder in the early sixteenth century, the development of the genre was complete. These prints consist exclusively of dozens of four-voice, and occasionally threevoice, tenor lieder with the types of texts and musical phrases which we commonly associate with the genre. 3 Although the titles of these prints do not always indicate clearly the content, the genre, and the number and distribution of voices found in the prints, they do confirm the picture. "Gesangkbticher mit Tenor, Discant, Bass und Alt," "hubsche Lieder myt Discant, Alt, Bas und Tenor," "teutsche Lieder," or "teutsche Liedlein" can be read in the Oeglin print of 1512, the Arnt von Aich print of 1519, the Schi:iffer-Apiarius print of 1536, and in the series of Forster prints beginning with 1549.4 However, what do the sources look like for the German song before this well-known run of printed collections appeared? Furthermore, can one trace a line of development from these earlier sources which leads to the make up of the genre as defined in the above-mentioned printed collections?
