These strophic poems were set to music, and sung by alternating choirs of girls.
P. Smith discusses "The Strophic Structure of the Book of Micah" in a volume of Old Test.
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.