Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) composed the first of his lovely Songs Without Words in 1830. While the entire volume of works for solo piano presents possibilities for transcription, we have chosen to arrange just one of the pieces, Op.19 No.1 in E Major.

This publication is available in two quite different versions, arranged for either clarinet and piano or bass clarinet and piano. The clarinet version takes the beautiful piano melody into a quite comfortable range. The bass clarinet version takes advantage of the larger range of the instrument, the bass clarinet and piano sharing both melody and bass line of the original. The key of the original work is maintained, offering the young player challenges of reading in a difficult key, but otherwise the arrangements are quite accessible for a student of either instrument.