In this blog you can find all the background information I have found, which led me to reconstruct Sîôn trûre. So you can read about the origin of minnesang and the characteristics of their compositional style, German medieval poetry, biographical matters of der Wilde Alexander (a.k.a. Meister Alexander - according to the Jenaer Liederhandschrift) and details about the reconstruction process - all these things in the strict aspect of Meister Alexander.
There was a reason, he was called "wild": he lived the restless life of a vagabond and his lifestyle defines his compositional style and way of treating poetry. I will be able to show this to you, my dear Reader, after I discussed the fashion and traditions of his time. One could say, that reconstructing a piece by a composer who clearly did not follow the rules is impossible, but I would slightly disagree (at least, for now I disagree in theory) on this point of view. It is often told that The rules are there to break them - so did Alexander in his compositions. Therefore a possible way to reconstruct the missing melodic lines of Sîôn trûre is possibly this:
- find out the rules
- find out how Alexander broke them
- by reconstruction process first apply the rules and then break them
