Why “meistersinger” is a great word
A master singer, formally belonging to a German guild from the 14th to 16th centuries, who composed and performed lyric poetry and music under an exacting, codified system of rules. Borrowed from German Meistersinger, from Meister ("master") + Singer ("singer"), first attested in English in 1818. Unlike the minnesinger, an aristocratic predecessor whose verses flowed with the wine of courtly love, or the troubadour, whose art roamed the wider fields of chivalric and political sentiment, the meistersinger was a burgher craftsman for whom song was a trade governed by guild statute. His world was the flicker of candlelight in a Nuremberg hall, the measured tap of a staff marking time, and the faint, proud scent of ink drying on a prize-winning manuscript—a testament to the human compulsion to build cathedrals of order even in the realm of air and sound.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).