CHAPTER 3: History to 1800 > Later Renaissance - 16th century

Detailed Treatises - 6 of 8 : Schoon Boeczke

In 1568 a Flemish translation of the Livre Plaisant was published by Jan van Ghelen, again at Antwerp, under the title Dit is een seer Schoon Boecxke..., 'This is a very beautiful book...'; it gives the same English translation as does the Livre Plaisant, of course.

Note that psalterion is translated as Psalterium, not by one of the hakkebord names, the earliest known examples of which dates from 1659.

The other instrument names are rendered as Clavicordium, Luyte, Fluyte, orgelen, clavisemel, virginael, herpecordium and herpe.

For the expression frapper (sur le luc... la harpe/ sur le psalterion), the normal Flemish word for 'hit' is used. (op er luvten) slaen ( .... op die herpe/ op dat Psalterium) so that perhaps the, same caution needs to be exercised in interpreting Netherlands references to struck dulcimers and psalteria, as with the French frapper (and perhaps also the German use of schlagen, and even Scandinavian slå). This last point assumes that the use in the Schoon Boecxke of the term slaen for plucking a string instrument is representative of normal Netherlands use at the time: if the translator were not familiar with music, and simply translated literally, unaware of the secondary meaning, then we could continue to trust that slaen means to hit. More data are clearly required.