'Apollo's Giften': een serie wereldlijke liedboeken uit het midden van de achttiende eeuw

Abstract

Amongst the multitude of secular songbooks that were printed in the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (The Netherlands), there are seven that seem to be linked together, all bearing the title “Apollo’s Gift”, which were printed in the Hague, Dordrecht, Leiden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hoorn. A remarkable feature is that they were all written for annual celebrations such as the Fair, New Year, St Nicholas (the Dutch 'Sinterklaas') and Shrove Tuesday. The connexion between, and the chronology of these books has been revealed through an extensive study of the existing copies. Furthermore, they contain information regarding the audience for which the works are aimed, and also the context surrounding both writer and printer. The corpus consists of 635 songs in total, most of which are pastoral love songs in which mythological figures are often the subject. Based on the occurrence of genres within the collection, an edition of a representative selection of thirteen songs is presented.