The Power of Melodies

Everyone has the natural ability and need to make and listen to music. We experience this every day, whether we are working or are looking for relaxation, are in church or in a bar, are at a party or putting children to bed. The easiest way to make music is by singing songs, especially if you have the tune in your head.

Songs – with tunes that everyone knows or quickly learns – provide the best means of connecting people to one another, particularly if they can enjoy it together. It has been shown by science that singing makes you happy – singing produces endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine which are hormones and neurotransmitters that constitute the most important triggers of pleasure in our brains.

Why this Top 40? The collection of melodies combines something useful with something agreeable: a historical heritage is preserved, made accessible, all in an attractive fashion, and at the same time passed on. Knowledge of historical songs is generally limited. For this reason, it is of great importance to allow modern-day speakers of Dutch to experience the richness of this cultural inheritance and to sing the old songs again themselves. This end is served by the Liedboek van de Top 40 van de Gouden Eeuw (Primavera Pers), where the songs are given in musical notation beneath which is set the text of the first two verses.

The website http://top40vandegoudeneeuw.nl offers additional midi files to learn the 40 melodies. This triple album with professional recordings of the songs is of use both for enjoyment and as an aid to learning the songs. In this way we can become familiar with the music which for centuries lay close to the hearts of the Netherlanders.

The Top 40 not only offers the possibility of singing the texts that have been selected for this song book. Every melody was in its time a point of departure for innumerable new song texts. For example, the most commonly used melody, no. 1 in the Top 40, ‘O zalig heilig Bethlehem’, gives rise to 379 contrafacts from the period 1535-1750. We know of 283 contrafacts for number 11 in the Top 40, ‘Fortuin helaas’, and 181 for number 40, ‘Allez où le sort vous conduit’. That means that anyone who knows all the tunes of the Top 40 can sing thousands of songs.

Exclusively available at NativeDSD in Stereo and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD plus 5.1.4 Channel Immersive Auro3D Surround Sound.  Not available on SACD.

Margot Kalse – Alto, Mezzo-Soprano
Earl Christy – Lute
Ilil Danin – Virginal
Sebastiaan Ammerlaan – Baritone
Esther Kronenburg – Soprano