The ''Souterliedekens'' (literal: Psalter-songs) is a Dutch

metrical psalter A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a verse 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 harmonisa ...

, published in 1540 in

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

, 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 folksong melodies that were known at that time can be reconstructed only because they have survived in 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 In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect trea ...

. The Antwerp printer Tielman Susato dedicated four volumes of his music-books ("Musyck Boexkens") to Clemens' "Souterliedekens" (vol. IV to VII).

See also