Souterliedekens

• The Dutch word "Souterliedekens" is a derivation of "psalterlied" or "psalm songs". Originally, they were religious texts versified to the tunes of popular songs about love and drinking, mainly meant to inspire people to sing psalms. The great composer Clemens non Papa (ca 1510/16 -1555/56) made three-part adaptions of the Souterliedekens which were published in 1556-'57 by the famous Antwerp printer Tylman Susato who, in 1561, published a second volume, this time with four-part settings of all 150 psalms, by a pupil of Clemens, Gherardus Mes of whom nothing else is known, not even his day of birth or year of dead.

• Not only are the "Souterliedekens" of great musical importance and very famous, but they also contain the most delightful music. Camerata Trajectina has been performing them all over the world with the greatest of success, and for this CD a selection was made of the best and most enchanting of these settings, with the original songs preceding them, so that the difference between the worldly songs and the sacred polyphony can be clearly heard.

• We have already issued several highly successful CDs with Camerata Trajectina, all with specific Dutch repertoire, but in view of the international renown of the songs and the composers, there are for this issue English translations of the introduction and of all the song texts in the booklet.

Since its foundation in 1974, the Utrecht ensemble Camerata Trajectina has Specialised in music from the Low Countries from the middle ages until the seventeenth century, from Hadewych to Huygens. Central to their work are literary and cultural history which are given a musical dimension in projects around poets like Hooft, Bredero, Coornhert, Vondel and Huygens; also central are themes like the Eighty-Year War, the religious conflicts and the Dance of Death. Camerata Trajectina is an ever welcome guest at the Holland Festival Early Music Utrecht and participated in national Dutch remembrance days of the Union of Utrecht, William of Orange, Constantijn Huygens and Coornhert. The ensemble has given hundreds of concerts in the Netherlands and Flanders and toured the United States, England, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Bulgaria. They have recorded six LPs and three CDs, all of them for Globe.