Sweet Remembrance No. 1 Opus 19

The Anacrouse collection offers pianists, beginners and advanced alike, a wide choice of classical works from the Renaissance to the present day. It brings together major works of the repertoire as well as rarer pieces, and also offers transcriptions for piano solo or four hands, selected for their musical and educational interest. Each score, available individually, benefits from careful editorial work: a rigorously established musical text, clear and legible engraving, accompanied by a short biography of the composer and a note on the work.

“Sweet Remembrance” (Doux souvenir), the first piece of the first book of Songs Without Words (Opus 19), is one of the most representative works of Mendelssohn’s lyricism. For the pianist, it is a fundamental study in polyphony and the shaping of a singing line. The pedagogical challenge lies in the ability to bring out a fluid, expressive soprano melody while maintaining a murmured, very regular semiquaver accompaniment. It is an ideal piece for working on wrist suppleness and finger independence within the same hand.

Published around 1832, this piece inaugurated the new genre of the Lieder ohne Worte, in which the piano takes the place of the human voice to express intimate feelings. “Sweet Remembrance” immediately places the listener in an atmosphere of serenity and tenderness. Through its limpid structure and obvious melodic beauty, this page has established itself as a model of the Romantic miniature, offering the musician a lesson in purity and elegance of sound.