The volume contains 46 previously unknown songs by  Felix Mendelssohn  Bartholdy : settings  of poems by Scott/ Storck , Matthisson , Hölty , Heine, Gellert and others are waiting to be discovered! From the “ Lied  zum   Geburtstag  meines   guten   Vaters ” ,  a joint composition with his  sister Fanny and one of Mendelssohn’s first surviving compositions, to works  from his period  of study with Carl Friedrich  Zelter , the songs span  his entire period of compositional activity.<br>
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Popular texts such as “  Ich denke dein ” by Friedrich von Matthisson (set by composers including Schubert, Beethoven, Weber and Wolf), “ Erinnerung ” by Heinrich Heine (set by Schumann, Cornelius, Franz and others) are now available in Mendelssohn‘s settings. Also  included is  his only song cycle “ Vier  Lieder”  of 1830. These four songs  are linked by motifs in a dramatic  narrative structure.<br>
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To mark the composer’s 200th anniversary in 2009, the editor Eugene  Asti, Professor at the  Guildhall School of Music in London , presents a substantial repertoire of songs in a critical-practical edition. The wide range of forms and colours contained in  this collection  challenges the accepted view of Mendelssohn’s mostly strophic song settings  being  comparatively straightforward stylistically.<br>