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Updated: June 17, 2025
No music can be intelligible without rhythm. The rhythmic pulsations are there; they are distinctly felt by the hearer in the performance, and in modern editions the barring is always introduced; but it is less crude, less obvious, through not being enforced by strong accents. We have already seen how the Volkslied became fertilized by the polyphony of church-music.
Humperdinck's melody is founded upon the Volkslied, and he uses at least one nursery tune with charming effect. The framework of 'Hänsel und Gretel' is that bequeathed by Wagner, but the spirit which animates and informs the work is so different from that of the Bayreuth master, that there can be no suspicion of imitation, much less of plagiarism.
The following is a free translation of the Transvaal Volkslied, which may serve to illustrate the sentiments which have dominated the Boers ever since their national existence: TRANSVAAL VOLKSLIED. Right nobly gave Voortrekkers brave their blood, their lives, their all; For Freedom's right, in Death's despite, they fought at duty's call. Ho!
Their song was short-lived and eventually withered under the degenerate Meistersingers. But their work was not lost. With the decline of chivalry and the disappearance of Court life as a thing apart the Volkslied began once more to flower. From the fourteenth century to the sixteenth song was universal, and it is from this time that the ballads of our collections are mostly gathered.
Thus the Volkslied was the creation as it was the property of the people in just the same sense as were our mediaeval churches. The fact that the authors are not recognizable is vital for this kind of art. The recreations of the people at this time were "Sagen, Singen, Tanzen," story-telling, singing, dancing, in which all joined, high and low together; no others were known.
Its magnificent choruses are sung by men, and Germany is the home of the Mannergesang; among the opera's songs are echoes of the Volkslied ditties which seem to have been caught up in the German nurseries or plucked off the lips of the itinerant German balladist; its emotional music is heartfelt, warm, ingenuous, and in form and spirit free from the artificiality of Italian opera as it was in Mozart's day and as it continued to be for a long time thereafter.
Jakob Grimm, in his essay on the Meistergesang, illustrates the deep and pensive innocence of the Volkslied by the story of the infant Krishna, into whose mouth his mother looked and beheld within him the measureless glories of heaven and earth while the child continued its unconscious, careless play.
Curiously enough, Mendelssohn's "Antigone" begins with a chorus more like a drinking-song than anything else, and the first solo is pure Volkslied; both of them imbued with a Teutonic flavor that could be cut with a knife.
Here and there a Volkslied or Marchen shows a national aptitude for stout animal laughter; and we see that the literature is built on it, which is hopeful so far; but to enjoy it, to enter into the philosophy of the Broad Grin, that seems to hesitate between the skull and the embryo, and reaches its perfection in breadth from the pulling of two square fingers at the corners of the mouth, one must have aid of 'the good Rhine wine, and be of German blood unmixed besides.
Vixen thought of the German Volkslied, as she looked at the old lady in the black cap, bending over a ponderous volume, with the solemn-visaged cat coiled on the chair beside her. "Minerva's Vogel war ein Kauz." The Persian cat seemed as much an attribute of the female theologian as the bird of the goddess.
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