ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to uncover Sweelinck's choice of title and text for this set of variations by unravelling the layers of religious, national and linguistic networks that converged in Amsterdam at that time. Considering the multifarious political and religious networks that operated in the northern provinces of The Netherlands in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Sweelinck could have had access to a number of other Psalters which used the same melody for Psalm 36 in the Genevan Psalter. The term 'semi-liturgical' refers to Sweelinck's function as organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam: while he did not play during the worship service itself because of certain Calvinistic musical restrictions, he would have improvised on Psalm melodies before and after the service. According to Johannes Gaetner: What the educated public found in the Latin metrical translations was something else: a humanistic delight in literary skill and an occasion for a fascinating comparison between original and translation.
