French Minstrels

Minstrels

Minstrels, or traveling thespians, thrived throughout Europe in medieval times. The term minstrel referred to a professional entertainer of any kind from the 12th century to the 17th century. Minstrels were instrumentalist, but were also often jugglers, acrobats, and storytellers. Although minstrels no longer exist, they played an important role in medieval history and, at one time, could be found, in one form or another, throughout the entire continent of

Europe.

Different countries had different names for minstrels. In Germany, they were called minnesingers. In France, they were known as troubadours and joungleurs. The Scandinavian minstrels were called skalds. The Irish

Troubadour's, French minstrels, flourished in from the 11th century through the 13th century. Troubadours were found in the southern part of France.

The troubadours were among the first minstrels to use their native tongue rather than Latin. The Latin language was considered the literary language of the middle ages. There were approximately 400 troubadours who were known to have lived. The majority of them were nobles and some were even kings

(Microsoft Encarta 96 Encyclopedia.)

Originally troubadours sang their poems, later they were accompanied by jongleurs who played musical instruments. The musical instruments the jongleurs played were the fiddle and the lute. The subject of their songs were based on topics such as love ,politics, religion, war, and death. Approximately 400 melodies and 4000 poems have been preserved from medieval troubadours (Microsoft

Encarta 96 Encyclopedia.)

The German version of the Troubadour was the meistersinger. The meaning of meistersinger is master singer. The meistersingers were a group of poet musicians and were given the status of tradesmen. The first German

The meistersingers began in the late middle ages, attempting to revive the older minstrel art of the minnesingers. From 1200 to 1400 the meistersingers began to develop rules for the composition of songs and even had schools to teach the art of being a meistersinger. Like music schools today, meistersingers had to study and pass exams before being considered a meistersinger. The Celtic lands of Ireland, Scotland , and Wales also had their minstrels called bards. Bards were professional poets who sang about heroic accomplishments and national pride. They accompanied themselves with harps.

Their chief form of expression was poetic alliteration or rhyme. By the 1700's the bards were no longer popular. A famous playwright, William Shakespeare, is often called the Bard of Avon (World Book Encyclopedia pp. 109.) Today bards are often seen and heard at folk festivals.

The decline of minstrels was due to that of modernization. The printing press created news papers, books, and other media, so the need for minstrels simply depleted. Now folktales could be written down, books and songs