Before embarking on my present project, I had no idea in which prose texts I could expect to find music. I therefore decided to keep the corpus as broad as possible at the start, and to compile a list of all prose fiction texts between 1600 and 1700. In doing so, I did not distinguish between translated and original works and included all Dutch-language fiction of the period. In total, this amounted to some three hundred titles. I then studied about a hundred of these titles from the period between 1600 and 1650, plus a few examples from the second half of the century. I searched these texts for the presence of musical terms, while also making a note of lyrics and melody indications. Obviously it would be ideal to do this also for the material from the second half of the century. However, my initial selection already provides a number of important insights.

While reading, I kept in mind the question of whether the use of music was ultimately the same as what I knew from the literature of later periods. In other words, would the analytic model that Werner Wolf had designed in 1999 be useful for the examination of the lyrics and other musical elements in these earlier prose texts, or would it take on a completely different role and function? And in the latter case, how could the differences be best described?

I will start by reporting some practical results. I have identified five main categories in the Dutch prose of the 17th century. In approximately one-third of the texts, music plays no role at all (1). In about a quarter of them, music serves as a theme, that is,it is discussed by the narrator or by the characters in one way or another (2). In one-fifth of the texts, music serves as a theme, and song texts are also included (3). One-sixth of the texts has music as a theme, as well as song lyrics, and indications of the corresponding melodies (4). Music notation is very rare in these novels. I found only two examples (5).

Although this classification might be of some use in itself, it becomes much more interesting when it is brought to bear on the development of the literary use of music.