In 1845, having already completed his fifth opera, Tannhäuser, and contemplating a new one on the story of Lohengrin, Richard Wagner was inspired to take up the subject of the medieval "Mastersingers" by his reading of Georg Gottfried Gervinus' Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen. However, although he composed a prose draft of a libretto in the same year, it would take him more than 20 years to bring the project to completion. After further researching the subject in Jakob Grimm's Über den altdeutschen Meistergesang of 1811 and Wagenseil's 1697 history of Nuremberg, entitled Nuremberg Chronicle, Wagner finally penned a verse libretto for Die Meistersinger in the winter of 1861-1862. He then broke off work on Siegfried (which he had also lain aside to complete Tristan und Isolde in 1859) in order to compose the score.

Fortunately for Wagner, much of this work took place under the patronage of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, who called the composer to his court in May 1864, to offer his support. Wagner set up house in a country estate outside Lucerne, Switzerland, with his future second wife, Cosima von Bülow (née Liszt) (then wife of the conductor Hans von Bülow), and completed the score in relative peace. For Wagner, this was a change of pace, since he spent much of his early career fleeing from debtors. Finally completed, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg premiered to great acclaim at the Munich Court Opera on June 21, 1868—with the cuckolded von Bülow conducting.

Wagner used the traditions of the German Mastersingers as the basis for the musical conception of his opera. Through his frequent use of bar form (AAB, or Stollen, Stollen, Abgesang), for example, Wagner pays musical homage to these early composers, whose preserved output overwhelmingly favors this formal arrangement. One of the underlying themes of Die Meistersinger—that rules, while necessary for the tempering of inspiration, cannot create great art—is illustrated musically in Act One, Scene Three, when the character Kothner sings mechanical, etude-like music while reading the rules for composing a Mastersong. In stark contrast to Kothner's pedantry is Walther's trial song, which consists of a ravishing wash of chromatic exuberance contained within the boundaries of no prescribed formal plan. If Walther, the naturally great musician, represents Wagner himself, then it is equally true that the obtuse and curmudgeonly Sixtus Beckmesser represents Wagner's artistic and aesthetic nemesis, Eduard Hanslick. Beckmesser's music makes this association sardonically clear, making frequent use of artless staccato notes that seem to bite, rather than sing.

Seen in its most favorable light, Meistersinger is a good natured comic parable about the relationship between art and those that create it. However, the work also harbors elements of Wagner's growing anti-semitism and his desire to eliminate non-Germanic elements from his music. The characterization of Beckmesser, as well as being a jab at the composer's rival critic, also clearly establishes that character as a Jew through references to the Grimm fairy tale "The Jew in the Thorn Bush." For some listeners, this association coupled with the unfavorable caricature, taints the overall geniality of the work with an element of menace; but, by any purely artistic assessment Die Meistersinger is a finely crafted drama, rich with dramatic and musical textures that showcase Wagner's creative gifts at their best.

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