Souterliedekens
Encyclopedia
The Souterliedekens is a Dutch metrical psalter
Metrical psalter
A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a metrical translation of all or part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry, meant to be sung as hymns in a church. Some metrical psalters include melodies or even harmonizations...

, published in 1540 in Antwerp, and which remained very popular throughout the century. The metrical rhyming psalms were - probably - arranged by a Utrecht nobleman: Willem van Zuylen van Nijevelt (d. 1543). For the melodies he used folksongs from the Low Countries (though some have German or French origin). This publication has great value, because the publisher (Symon Cock) not only added the phrase 'sung to the tune of...' but also provided the actual music (melody) with the texts.

Nowadays many of the folksongs can only be reconstructed because of the survival of the "Souterliedekens". Composers like Jacobus Clemens non Papa, Gerardus Mes and Cornelis Boscoop made polyphonic settings based on the melody of the monophonic "Souterliedekens". The melody often functions as a cantus firmus. The Antwerp printer Tielman
Susato dedicated four volumes of his music-books ("Musyck Boexkens") to Clemens' "Souterliedekens" (vol. IV to VII).
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