Word Finder - strophes

definition

A turn in verse, as from one metrical foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other.

definition

The section of an ode that the chorus chants as it moves from right to left across the stage.

definition

A pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based.

An elaborate symmetry is observable in the construction of many of his elegies, and this has tempted critics to divide a number of them into strophes.

His comrades adored him for his liberality, and the frequent visits of Icelandic skalder to his court testify to a love of poetry on his part, indeed one of his own strophes has come down to us.

It was first seriously assailed by Adolf Holtzmann (Untersuchungen fiber das Nib., Stuttgart, 1854), who argued that the original could not have been strophic in form - the fourth lines of the strophes are certainly often of the nature of "padding" - that it was written by Konrad (Kuonrat of the Klage), writer to Bishop Pilgrim of Passau about 970-984, and that of existing MSS.

Consequently we find an extraordinary development of strophic forms corresponding to the many new "tones" which every Meistersinger regarded it as his duty to invent - tones which bore the most remarkable and often ridiculous names, such as Gestreif tsaf ranblumleinweis, Fettdachsweis, Vielfrassweis, geblilmte Paradiesweis, &c. The verses were adapted to the musical strophes by a merely mechanical counting of syllables, regardless of rhythm or sense.