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Stories of the Wagner Opera by H. A. (Hélène Adeline) Guerber
page 68 of 148 (45%)
time at a concert in Leipzig.

This fragment was very well received and there was an
'enthusiastic demand for a repetition, in which the members
of the orchestra took part as much as the audience.' The opera
itself, however, was first performed under Von Bülow, in 1868, at
Munich. The best singers of the day took the principal parts, and
the result of their united efforts was 'a perfect performance;
the best that had hitherto been given of any work of the master.'

The opera, at first intended as a comical pendant to
'Tannhäuser,' is, as we have already stated, Wagner's first
and only attempt to write in the comic vein, and the text
is full of witty and cutting allusions to the thick-headed
critics (at whose hands Wagner had suffered so sorely), who
sweepingly condemn everything that does not conform to their
fixed standard. During all the Middle Ages, and more especially
in the middle of the thirteenth century, the quaint old city of
Nuremberg was the seat of one of the most noted musical guilds,
or German training schools for poets and musicians. The members
of this fraternity were all burghers, instead of knights like
the Minnesingers, and held different ranks according to their
degree of proficiency. They were therefore called singers when
they had mastered a certain number of tunes; poets when they
could compose verses to a given air; and Master Singers when
they could write both words and music on an appointed theme.
The musical by-laws of this guild were called 'Tabulatur,'
and every candidate was forced to pass an examination, seven
mistakes being the maximum allowed by the chief examiner,
who bore the title of Marker.
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