The Antwerp Songbook, 1544, Part 1: A through H

Program: #06-11   Air Date: Mar 01, 2006

NOTE: One of the defining musical publications of the high Renaissance, Jan Rollins' amazing publication gave us the first printed version of 221 secular songs, a kind of folk song-cum-"fake book" that is an amazing window into late medieval music. Popular in its day, it was, according to Louis Peter Grijp, "the first collection of such import to have appeared in print. The songs describe all the facts of life as it was lived during the late Middle Ages: we have not only love and sex but also fidelity and adultery, ruse and desire, unwanted pregnancies, randy monks and impotent old men, shrewd whores, drunkards and boozers, war and crime, politics and royalty."

Grijp directs both the Camerata Trajectina and the Egidius Kwartet on this 2-CD set on the Globe label, CD number GLO 6058.

We continue our association with our partners at the Flemish Government Office at the Belgian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Tourist Office in New York. For information on Flanders, please visit the Web site:
www.visitflanders.be

Unless otherwise noted, the works are anonymous:

--Aenmerct doch mijn geclach ( a lover's lament--the first letters of each line spell the probable author, Aegied Maes).

--Adieu schoon bloemken, reyn akeleye (A song of farewell by a lovesick rhetorician).

--Bistu een crijgher oft bistu een boer?   (A rich farmer's son, called into the army, longs to go home).

--Den dach en wil niet verborghen zijn (An aubade--the guard warns the daughter of the house of dawn).

--JACOBUS CLEMENS non PAPA (c.1510-c.1556): De lustelijcke mey is nu (Let's go off to the country in May).

--Den winter is een onweert gast (A song of farewell, as the lover tells how hard it is to love in any season of the year).

--Eylaes, ic arm allendich wuf (A marriage plaint, making fun of young women marrying old men).

--Een ridder ende een meysken jonck (A knight and a girl on a riverbank talk of love--this song is still sung in the Lowlands, and this is the first record of it).

--Hoe coemt dat bi, scoon lief  (A lover's plaint, as the poet had been abandoned and welcomes death).

--Het was een aerdt, een aerdich medecijn (Bawdy song--tradesman describes sex using his own trade jargon).

--Het is goet vrede in alle duytsche landen (A ballad that treats the robber chief Thijsken van den Schilde who, when taken captive, is visited by his lover in prison).

--Het soude een fier Margrietelijn (A treatment of the legend of St. Margaret of Leuven, who, after being raped and murdered by robbers who threw her into the river Dijle, floated upstream and emerged from the waters alive).

--Het viel eens hemels douwe (A May song and aubade combined).

--Het voer een visscher visschen (A fisherman tries to seduce a wife on the banks of the Rhine; when she invites him into her house, her husband appears).

--Het is gheleden jaer ende dach (A telling of the story of troubadour Reinmar von Brennenberg, who was murdered and his heart was fed to his beloved.)

--Hout al aen, laet ons vrolic springen (Bawdy song about a profligate wife who takes two lovers in the morning, but schedules them too close together, when, inevitably, the husband returns).

Composer Info

JACOBUS CLEMENS non PAPA (c.1510-c.1556)

CD Info

CD number GLO 6058