“[…] Send me a song or two to sing in autumn, or even better in summer or in spring, on the water or the meadow or the bridge, or in the forest or in the garden. […]”, wrote Mendelssohn on 1 August 1839 in a letter to his friend Karl Klingemann. These popular, folksong-like and yet ingenious four-part “songs to sing in the open air” form a significant part of the composer’s oeuvre, and he returned to the genre throughout his whole life – the earliest piece dates from 1820, the most recent from 1847. Mendelssohn composed a total of 33 of these songs for mixed choir, divided into seven volumes. He compiled four of them himself (Opp. 41, 48, 50, and 59); another three volumes were edited and printed posthumously. This volume contains arrangements of all the songs in Op. 48.

The name SAM-Klang takes the three voice parts from the arrangements – Soprano, Alto and Men – and combines it with the Scandinavian and German words for ‘sound’ to create the portmanteau word ‘sound together’ or ‘harmony’. The SAM-Klang series offers basic and advanced choral repertoire arranged for soprano, alto and one male voice- part. In addition to new repertoire and new arrangements, you will also find essential parts of the classical German, Scandinavian, French and English SATB repertoire, carefully and considerately reworked for SAM. The arrangements retain the characteristic features of the original movements and have almost the same richness of timbre, resulting in works which sound nearly unchanged to an audience. Piano reductions of all choral movements facilitate rehearsal preparation. The arrangements offer development opportunities for all voice sections, bringing new life and new quality to SAM choir work. SAM-Klang enables youth choirs to gain access to classical choral literature and ensures that mixed choirs who face challenges in finding singers for all male voice parts continue to have access to well-loved repertoire.