Souterliedekens

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The Souterliedekens (literal: Psalter-songs) is the title of a book with Dutch psalms, published 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 publiser (Symon Cock) not only added the phrase 'sung to the tune of...' but he provided also 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 cantus firmus. The Antwerp printer Tielman Susato dedicated 4 volumes of his music-books (Musyck Boexkens) to Clemens Souterliedekens (vol. IV to VII).