Frauenlob's Song of Songs. A Medieval German Poet and his Masterpiece

Frauenlob was the popular name of Heinrich von Meissen (c.1260-1318), author of a remarkable corpus of Middle High German poetry, in particular of the Marienleich – an epic poem of over 500 lines in praise of the Virgin Mary. In this volume, Barbara Newman presents her translation of the Marienleich, luxuriously presented on facing pages alongside Karl Stackmann's critical text of the poem. This serves to introduce her study of Frauenlob and his milieu, as well as a more detailed study of the Marienleich and its influence, supplemented by a rich commentary on each of the twenty strophes of that poem.

Middle High German poetry is probably a closed universe to many medievalists brought up in an Anglophone, Francophile, or Italophile tradition. The great Germanic epics, like the Nibelungenlied or Gottfried von Strassbourg's Tristan, have long been known through the lens of Wagner, while the Minnesingers – often noble amateurs – are also celebrated for their writing about love. The religious compositions of Minnesinger like Frauenlob are perhaps less well known than their songs about love. Yet, as Newman argues, Frauenlob offers an unusually sensuous and earthy vision of the Virgin, as the Bride and lover of the Song of Songs. He was a contemporary of Eckhart and Dante, and stands in their company. Whereas many Minnesinger were noble amateurs, Frauenlob was a spruchdichter, a lyric poet who enjoyed the patronage of powerful nobility – including the Duke of Breslau and the archbishops of Bremen and Mainz. He seems to have been particularly active in the court of Prague. Perhaps most importantly, from the perspective of medieval music, his poetry survives with music, enabling his compositions to be appreciated in the original context in which they were composed.

The volume is best appreciated through listening to the accompanying CD of Marienleich, as interpreted by the ensemble Sequentia, directed by the late Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby. Barbara Newman had already collaborated with Sequentia in their production of the songs of another great musical and poetic genius of the German Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen. As Benjamin Bagby explains in a moving note about their recording of the project, he and Barbara Thornton had originally recorded Marienleich in the early 1990s, and only through technological developments could that early recording be restored in digital form. For those who remember Barbara Thornton, the result is a particularly moving recreation of a voice from the past, in a double sense.

Marienleich is a particularly brilliant reworking of the dialogue between lover and beloved in the Song of Songs. In the recording, male and female solo and chorus combine with instrumental interludes to evoke a text that is both sensuous and mystical in its character. Newman's translation is itself richly poetic, successfully showing how the Bride is the archetypal lover, the Mother of God who holds all creation in her womb: 'I am the well of life on earth | as sweet as sugar – and the joy of birth | I am the mirror of great purity | in which God gazed before all time | I am the fire | in which the phoenix renewed its youth | I am the precious pelican's blood, | and well I know that this is truth.

Newman draws on the same tradition of mystical discourse as she presented in the writing of Hildegard, but here we find that tradition given an earthiness through the vernacular that Hildegard never was able to achieve – even if she was pointing in that direction. Marienleich is celebration of the Virgin in a cosmic sense, as the eternal wisdom through which the universe was composed as well as the mother of the redeemer through which it was restored. It is also about the love between the Virgin and her Lord, as that of the archetypal lover and beloved.

There is much to appreciate in Newman's analysis. Particularly, it is helpful in presenting connections between the Latin culture, both religious and philosophical, on which Frauenlob draws. Alan of Lille provides a particularly apposite synthesis of these two traditions, combining Marian reading of the Song of Songs with Platonic respect for natura.

Newman's argument that Frauenlob may also have drawn ideas directly from Abelard is intriguing, given that the latter's theological writings never enjoyed wide diffusion. There can be no doubt, however, that Frauenlob is a sophisticated theorist of both worldly and divine love, convinced of their fusion rather than of their contrast. He was also a master of heterometric form, each strophe being unlike the other. Newman's comparison of Frauenlob to Gerard Manley Hopkins is not inapposite. Her account of Frauenlob's proclamation of his own genius, and the claims of his poetic rival, Regenbogen, demonstrates the literary sophistication of a poet who amply deserves to be listened to with respect. Newman's volume is a fitting memorial to the achievement of Frauenlob and his interpreters.