Overture (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg)

Wagner sketched Die Meistersinger in 1845 as a comic companion piece to Tannhäuser, then left it alone for sixteen years; he resumed in 1861 and finished the score in 1867. It is his only mature opera on a historical subject with no gods and no magic, set among the artisan song guilds of sixteenth-century Nuremberg, and his only one framed in a plain C major. The premiere was given in Munich on 21 June 1868 under Hans von Bülow. Sachs's monologues, written for a cobbler who is also the work's conscience, carry its argument about rules and invention.