Jacob Bathen
He is mainly remembered for his publication of the so-called Maastricht songbook of 1554, which is one of only five surviving song books in the Dutch language from the 16th century.
[1] Bathen trained in the art of printing, most likely with a printer based in Louvain, who may have been Servaas van Sassen (also called Servatius Sassenus).
For Phalesius he printed the first, third, fourth and perhaps also the fifth edition of the collection Des chansons reduictz en tabulature de lut a deux, trois et quatre parties …, Leuven, 1547.
In addition to music scores, Bathen printed official publications and religious pamphlets, some of which were published by Petrus Phalesius and Martinus de Raymaker (known as 'Martinus Rotarius').
The work was entitled Lamentationes aliquot Jeremiae musicae harmoniae noviter adaptatae, adjectis aliquot sacris cantionibus, trium, quatuor, quinque et sex vocum and was dedicated to Anton of Schauenburg, at that time the dean of the Saint Servatius chapter in Maastricht, and later archbishop of Cologne.
At the end of 1554 or the beginning of 1555 he moved his business to Düsseldorf to become a printer at the court of the Duke of Jülich, Willem V van Kleef.
Jacob Bathen returned before 1558 to his parental home near Heverlee possibly travelling via Cologne where his brother Johan is believed to have been active as a printer at the time.
The publication is also referred to as 'Dat ierste boeck vanden Niewe Duytsche Liedekens (That first book of New Dutch songs) as well as The Maastricht Songbook, first of all because of the place where it was published.
The title page shows in the background a panorama of some landmarks of Maastricht and includes the city arms with a single star hanging from a tree branch.
The publication groups polyphonic Dutch songs by various composers, of whom some were famous in their time such as Jacobus Clemens non Papa and others who were of rather local renown such as Ludovicus Episcopius, Franciscus Florius and Jean de Latre.
When the music printer Petrus Phalesius for whom Bathen had previously printed some publications, published in 1572 in Leuven his collection of Dutch-language songs under the title Een Duytsch musyck boeck (A Dutch music book), no less than half of the songs were copied from The Maastrich Songbook.
[1] One of the principal reasons why the publication is relevant for music history is that the songs collected in it were in the Dutch language.
Susato launched an appeal to Flemish and Dutch-speaking composers to create songs in their mother tongue in order to show that native language music was not inferior to that made with French, Latin or Italian lyrics.
Phalesius would follow in Leuven in 1572 with Een Duytsch musyck boeck, half of the songs of which were recycled from The Maastricht Songbook.
It has been possible to recover the soprano part for some songs as they were also included in Phalesius' Een Duytsch musyck boeck and some other documents.
Some of the love songs are quite suggestive, such as the Een aerdich meysken seer jonck van jaren (A nice girl, very young of age) (no.
