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.
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.