Cornelis Symonszoon Boscoop (or Buschop, Boskop) (died 1573) was a Dutch organist, singer, and composer. He was organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam in the middle of the 16th century and was one of the predecessors of

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck ( ; April or May, 1562 – 16 October 1621) was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard comp ...

in this position.

Works

Little is known about Boscoop's life. The only surviving work of Boscoop's is the ''Fifty Psalms of David'' (1562). It was published in a new edition in 1568 in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

and was dedicated to the Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Erich II (Calenberg-Göttingen). The title page of the tenor part bears the following text: "Psalmen Dauid/ Vyfftich/ mit vier partyen/ zeer zuet ende lustich om singen en speelen op verscheiden instrumenten/ gecomponeert door M. Cornelius Buschop". the dedication is dated January 1568 and bears the words "tho Delft", though it is not clear whether Boscoop only briefly stayed there or whether he might have lived or worked in

Delft Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

at this time. For his texts, Boscoop used the

Souterliedekens The ''Souterliedekens'' (literal: Psalter-songs) is a Dutch metrical psalter, 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 v ...

widespread in the Netherlands. However, he did not use the melodies common to the Souterliedekens, but instead composed entirely new material for them. Many of the

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

s are in tripartite formal structure, ABC and ABA', with the opening and closing parts often repeated with a different text in the repeat. Some of the psalm settings have melodic and harmonic progressions which are characteristic of late Renaissance innovations.

References

*''Boscoop, Cornelis: 50 Psalmen David, naar de uitgave van 1568 in partituur gebracht en op nieuw uitgegeven door Dr. Max Seiffert'', Leipzig 1899. 1573 deaths Year of birth unknown Dutch male classical composers Dutch classical composers Dutch organists Dutch male organists Renaissance composers Musicians from Amsterdam {{Netherlands-composer-stub