The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mastersinger \Mas"ter*sing`er\, n. [A translation of G. meisters["a]nger.] One of a class of poets which flourished in Nuremberg and some other cities of Germany in the 15th and 16th centuries. They bound themselves to observe certain arbitrary laws of rhythm.
Wiktionary
n. A German lyric poet of the late Middle Ages.
Usage examples of "mastersinger".
The food for its satire, too, is most admirably chosen, for no feature of the social life of that place and period is more amiably absurd than the efforts of the handicraftsmen and tradespeople, with their prosaic surroundings, to keep alive by dint of pedantic formularies the spirit of minstrelsy, which had a natural stimulus in the chivalric life of the troubadours and minnesingers of whom the mastersingers thought themselves the direct and legitimate successors.
In its delineation of the pompous doings of the mastersingers, Wagner is true to the letter.
Veit Pogner, a rich silversmith, desiring to honor the craft of the mastersingers, to whose guild he belongs, offers his daughter Eva in marriage to the successful competitor at the annual meeting of the mastersingers on the feast of St.
I visited Nuremberg in 1886 in search of relics of the mastersingers and had no little difficulty in finding the church.
Church and tablet are the only relics of the mastersingers left in Nuremberg which may be called personal.
In them are poems from all of the mastersingers who make up the meeting which condemns Walther in St.
It was doubtless largely due to the influence of Hans Sachs that the guild of mastersingers built the first German theatre in Nuremberg in 1550.
From it he got the rules which governed the meeting of the mastersingers, like that which follows the religious service in the church of St.
Most easily recognized are the two broad march tunes typical of the mastersingers and their pageantry.
The three melodies which are presented in opposition to the spirit represented by the mastersingers and their typical music, are disclosed by a study of the comedy to be associated with the passion of the young lovers, Walther and Eva.
What is strong, and true, and pure, and wholesome in the art of the mastersingers he permits to pass through his satirical fires unscathed.
The Mastersingers, a work full of health, fun and happiness, contains not a single bar of love music that can be described as passionate: the hero of it is a widower who cobbles shoes, writes verses, and contents himself with looking on at the sweetheartings of his customers.
It was then that he composed the first two acts of Siegfried, and later on The Mastersingers, a professedly comedic work, and a quite Mozartian garden of melody, hardly credible as the work of the straining artifices of Tanehauser.
The middle part of the prelude, in which the opening march tune is heard in short, quick notes (in diminution, as the theoreticians say) maybe looked upon as caricaturing the mastersingers, not in their fair estate, but as they are satirized in the comedy in the person of Beckmesser.
And there were good voices joining in the choruses, so he wondered why Benden Hold would need a MasterSinger of his mother's standing.