Born in the Netherlands, Sweelinck spent his whole working life in Amsterdam, where he became organist of the Oude Kerk and a renowned teacher. As a composer, he wrote keyboard music, madrigals, and chansons, but his magnum opus was a four-volume collection of polyphonic settings of all 150 Psalms in the French translation of Marot and De Bèze, a work spanning his entire creative life. He published only one volume of Latin motets, the five-voiced Cantiones sacrae of 1619: the Netherlands then being officially Calvinist, these thirty-seven pieces (including the famous Hodie Christus natus est) would have been intended for private rather than liturgical use, at least in Sweelinck’s own country. The sparkling Laudate Dominum indeed calls for the lightness and agility associated with secular rather than liturgical music-making. The basso continuo, although not independent from the vocal bass, indicates that accompaniment was expected.

from notes by Collegium Records © 2009