Wer kan den hêrren von dem knehte gescheiden, swâ er ir gebeine blôzez fünde, het er ir joch lebender künde? - Walther von der Vogelweide

He was known to his countrymen as the Nightingale, but his own sweet-sounding name of Bird's-meadow (Vogelweide) suggests even more directly the pure, true, flute-like strain which he poured into Europe’s choir of voices.

For five hundred years after Walther's death – until Goethe – no German lyric poet was his equal.

The mouthpiece of the half-inarticulate, all-suggesting music that is at once the very soul and the inseparable garment of romance.