Hans Sachs: Where Shoemaking Meets Songwriting

Richard Wagner's opera "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" was popular in the late 19th century, which was when this advertisement depicting the lead, Hans Sachs, was printed. Public Domain

In modern popular music, simplicity and vulgarity are often bosom chums. This pairing has more to do with unscrupulous marketing techniques than anything else. On the opposite end, highbrow music has a reputation for being hard to understand. But while it’s often complex, it doesn’t have to be.

The German songwriter Hans Sachs is an example of simple yet elegant music. A cobbler by trade, he is the greatest representative of the “Meistersinger” (master singer) tradition that was popular in Germany during the late medieval and early modern periods. Sachs combined elegance with simplicity in a way that few have rivaled.

The Meistersinger Guilds

Topography of Nürnberg, Germany, 1572, by Georg Braun; and Frans Hogenberg. Public Domain

The place now considered to be the center of the Meistersinger tradition is Nuremberg, Germany. In the 15th century, it was one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire and home to a thriving class of merchants and artisans. As a “free city,” it was not subject to the rule of local princes or the usual rules of medieval guilds that restricted fraternizing between the different trades. It also prioritized education for its working-class citizens to a degree that few places did at that time.

The artisans organized another type of guild that revolved around recreation rather than occupation. This was the Meistersinger guild, where blacksmiths, carpenters, lawyers, teachers, and businessmen all mingled to write and recite unaccompanied solo songs.

The Meistersinger guild had a precursor in the Minnesingers (love singers), noble poet-musicians of the earlier medieval era. They sang of courtly love in the fashion of the French troubadours. Unlike this highborn and genteel genre, the Meistersingers were more earthy, appealing to common people.

An illustrated plate of the "Crowning of the Master-Singer," 1912, from "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg" by Oliver Huckel. Internet Archive. Public Domain

What made Meistersingers different from mere folk singers was the codified set of composition rules that the guilds enforced. During meetings, critics known as “Tabulators” judged an applicant’s song according to 32 rules for writing poetry, ranging from strictures on syllables and rhythm to melody, counterpoint, and rhyme scheme. If the applicant met all these standards, a wreath was placed on his head and he received the title of “Master.”

While the rules were complicated, the resulting songs were not. Simple speech patterns and enjoyable melodies were the goal.

The Greatest Meistersinger

The musical genius of Meistersinger Hans Sachs contributed to the spread of Lutheranism and the cultural flowering of Germany. A portrait of Hans Sachs, 1775–1840, by Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen after Jost Amman. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public Domain

It was into this world that Hans Sachs was born in 1494. Nearly all the information we have about him derives from the scattered references he made about himself in his more than 2,500 songs. One thing we know is that Sachs’s father, a tailor, made sure he received a good education. Reflecting on his childhood later in life, Sachs wrote:

Als ich in meiner Kindesjugend Erzogen ward zu Sitt’ und Tugend, Von meinen Ältern zu Zucht und Ehre Dergleich hernach auch durch die Lehre

(When I was in my youth Was raised to customs and virtue By my elders for breeding and honor The same afterward also through lessons)

He lists subjects from grammar to logic, philosophy, and astronomy, saying:

Ich lernt’ die Kunst auch der Gestirn’, Die Geburt der Menschen judizir’n,

(I learned the art of the stars To justify the birth of mankind.)

When Sachs was 15, he began apprenticing as a shoemaker. He then became a journeyman, traveling through different German-speaking towns. He eventually reached the court of Maximilian I, where he was introduced to the new style of the Meistersingers. Learning the art of poetry from a linen weaver, he showed a natural talent for the craft.

A few years later, Sachs returned to Nuremberg and became a leader of the singing guild. There, he reformed some of its more rigid compositional rules, making the school famous. Sachs wrote about everyday life, religion, and morality in a way that was often humorous. He also wrote religious songs that were more serious and helped to spread the emerging Lutheranism among common people.

One of his best-known songs, though difficult to translate, is “Silberweise” (“Silver Air”), in which Sachs affirms a belief in his calling by comparing the creative poet to a bubbling spring refreshed by underground waters. The spring sits above a large stagnant pond, representing the lesser singer who copies others. Feeling generous, Sachs bestows a green wreath to the inferior singer, but he gives the poet a golden crown.

The song has been recorded often and can be heard on YouTube.

Cultural Influence

Carl Lejdström as Hans Sachs in "The Master Singers in Nürnberg" at the Royal Opera, 1900. National Collections of Music, Theatre and Dance, Stockholm. Public Domain

Sachs had a far-reaching influence on German culture. Since then, his two greatest champions were the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and the composer Richard Wagner (1813–83).

Outside Germany, Sachs is best known today as the main character in Wagner’s comic opera, “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” In it, Wagner presents a charming depiction of how everyday jobs intermingled with the highbrow practice of writing verse. According to Sachs’s fictional pupil, David, in Act 1, Scene 2 of the opera:

Cobbling and poetry I learn both together: When I’ve beaten the leather smooth I learn to enunciate vowels and consonants; when I’ve waxed the thread till it’s firm and stiff, I well understand what makes a rhyme …

Much of the opera’s humor revolves around elaborating the strict compositional rules that the guild enforced, which are intricate to the point of absurdity. In one scene, David tells a character named Walther, who is auditioning to join the guild, that he is allowed only “seven faults,” which will be marked with chalk. More than that, and he will have “sung his chance away” and be “utterly undone!”

Goethe, Germany’s equivalent of Shakespeare, looked back to Sachs as a model for his own poetry and dramas. Like Goethe, Sachs was also a playwright.

(L) "The Cobbler-Poet Among His Books" and "A Chat With Hans Sachs," 1912, from "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg" by Oliver Huckel. Internet Archive. Public Domain

Goethe even wrote a poem, “Hans Sachs’s Poetical Mission,” that depicts the cobbler after a long day in his workshop. Putting away his dirty apron, he is visited by the Muse, who explains that he has been “selected” to proclaim “virtue and godliness” throughout the land. The poem ends with an assurance that the future will crown Sachs in poetic glory:

While he thus lives, in secret blessed, Above him in the clouds doth rest An oak-wreath, verdant and sublime, Placed on his brow in after-time …

We tend not to bestow laurel wreaths on bards anymore. Nor are lowly shoemakers showered in glory. With the extinction of the guild system and the rise of the university, the art scene became dominated by intellectuals. Over time, these white-collar bards separated out their poetical laundry from the rest of us. But without the blue collars, the whites would not be hanging on their high rack. The next time you’re taking off your shoes and relaxing to music, think of Hans Sachs.

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