Mendelssohn: Part-Songs for Mixed Choir

Description

Between 1834 and 1847 Felix composed a total of 28 songs for mixed voices, i.e. for two female (soprano and alto) and two male (tenor and bass) voices each. The pieces are arranged so that they can be sung by four individual singers as well as by smaller ensembles or large choirs. The composer had almost two-thirds of these works published by Breitkopf & Härtel in the collections opp. 41, 48 and 59, combining partly already existing and partly newly composed songs into a loose cycle of six songs each. The purpose of such occasional music was clear to him: "... the most natural music of all is when four people go for a walk together, in the forest, or on a boat, and then immediately carry the music with them and in them." The present volume contains all the songs published and unpublished during his lifetime, as well as their versions, which owe their various performance contexts.