The idea of the opera occurred to Wagner at Marienbad in 1845. He then sketched a scenario which differed widely from the one finally adopted. It is possible that certain scenes were written while he was at work on Lohengrin; there is a legend that the quintet was finished in 1845. Some add to this quintet the songs of Sachs and Walther. Wagner wrote to a friend on March 12, 1862: “Tomorrow I hope at least to begin the composition of Die Meistersinger”—the libretto was completed at Paris in 1861. He worked at Biebrich on the Rhine in 1862 on the music. The prelude was sketched in February of that year. The instrumentation was completed in the following June.

He wrote to his friend Dr. Anton Pusinelli from Penzing near Vienna on March 14, 1864: “I have tried with the greatest care to ensure myself the proper leisure for completing the Meistersinger by next winter. Unfortunately, everything has been very difficult for me because my continual indisposition and my sad frame of mind have kept company with my other trials, so as to make it more difficult for me to have any desire for work.” He wrote again to Pusinelli in a long letter about his “poor wife” Minna, questioning whether he should return to her: “Under favorable conditions I finally can complete my Meistersinger. Very probably this work will quickly become popular, and it can bring in good returns for me. But one can’t count on this, and my life from month to month must not depend on such possibilities; for if I have no ‘good inspirations,’ then I have nothing to write down, and with continual worries I no longer have very good inspirations now.”

At Lucerne on May 10, 1866, he wrote that he had won for a little time the quiet for creating “a great and joyful work. Wish me this success and—perhaps I dare to say it—wish it to the world!” He had already completed Act I and was progressing well with Act II, which was finished in December.

In 1868 he wrote from Lucerne: “In Dresden I had in mind an attempt to procure some guarantee for the Meistersinger against abominable incompetence of the Kapellmeisters there, and with what a nice reception was I met there!” The principal Kapellmeister was Julius Rietz, who was hostile to Wagner, as he had been at Leipsic.

The prelude is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, triangle, cymbals, harp, and the usual strings.

Wagner in his Autobiography tells how the idea of Die Meistersinger formed itself; how he began to elaborate it in the hope that it might free him from the thrall of the idea of Lohengrin; but he was impelled to go back to the latter opera. The melody for the fragment of Sachs’ poem on the Reformation occurred to him while going through the galleries of the Palais Royal on his way to the Taverne Anglaise. “There I found Truinet already waiting for me and asked him to give me a scrap of paper and a pencil to jot down my melody, which I quietly hummed over to him at the time.” “As from the balcony of my flat, in a sunset of great splendor, I gazed upon the magnificent spectacle of ‘Golden’ Mayence, with the majestic Rhine pouring along its outskirts in a glory of light, the prelude to my Meistersinger again suddenly made its presence closely and distinctly felt in my soul. Once before had I seen it rise before me out of a lake of sorrow, like some distant mirage. I proceeded to write down the prelude exactly as it appears today in the score, that is, containing the clear outlines of the leading themes of the whole drama.”