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autumn – autumnus

tempus fugit
Autumn in the Middle Ages - Autumn of the Middle Ages

Autumn time: time of harvest, time of joy, time of thanksgiving. Great festivals begin with the arrival of the last load of the harvest on the farm - much work lies behind the farmers. Their gratitude for the abundant gifts is directed to the earth and the sun, to nature - and to God, as is still the case today at the traditional harvest festival in October at Wintringer Farm.

The cycle of blossoming and withering, of becoming and passing away: In the Middle Ages, it applied to the recurring sequence of the seasons as well as to one's own life. Autumn is also a time to look back on the past year and to say goodbye: it marks the end of the growing season and the end of the summer half-year, the beginning of the dark season. The days become shorter, the shadows longer - not without reason, death in the Middle Ages is often a "reaper" who goes mowing over the fields.

With cheerful drinking songs and exuberant dances, people expressed their gratitude and hope for an equally good harvest in the coming year, but also farewell to summer. In their own way, the monks did the same through prayers and rituals - more quiet and introspective within the monastic walls of the Premonstratensian Priory of Wintringen. The church is a central place of salvation in the life of medieval man - from birth to death. Thanksgiving to God and reverence for nature played an important role. People were always aware that everything is involved in the great cycle of becoming and passing away: In the grain, life rests during the winter to awaken anew in the spring.

These different faces of autumn were the theme of the six-member Saarland ensemble Wahnfrîd - Music of the Middle Ages in the former priory church in Wintringen on October 3, 2004.

Since 1992, the formation has been engaged on the one hand in the most authentic possible reproduction of medieval music and on the other hand with the vision of bridging the gap between history and the present through their music in original settings. Original reconstructed instruments like shawm, flute, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, percussion, bagpipes and gampe are used. Their music is largely derived from the song manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries, from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Codex Buranus (Carmina Burana), the Libre Vermell de Montserrat and the great minnesinger and trouvères manuscripts.

Autumn as a season of reflection and retrospection - as a farewell - was the theme of the musical program, especially the songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein. "Es fuegt sich" is his great life ballad, in which he reviewed his entire life to date. The "Palestina Lied" of Walther von der Vogelweide is a review of his participation in a great crusade - the fulfillment of his personal life dream. In order to take the audience of this extraordinary concert, which was presented in Middle High German and Latin, into the autumn of the Middle Ages, recitations and modern translations combined the individual parts of the concert into a whole.