The arrangements in this collection represent 80 per cent of Duruflé’s entire a cappella œuvre, with three from the four Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens Op. 10 (1960) alongside Notre Père Op. 14 (1977/1978).

Given Duruflé’s legendary perfectionism and resulting tiny catalogue (Notre Père is his final opus), arrangements of these works, some of the most significant in the 20th-century choral canon, have been approached with the utmost care – hence the decision to omit the second Op. 10 motet, Tota pulchra es; it was deemed that there was no satisfying way to bring the original tessitura and divisi of the upper voices into the SAM-Klang mould. Throughout the three motets, Duruflé combines Gregorian chant and polyphony; the chant is always present in one or more voice. Notre Père is chant-like, albeit not Gregorian, and has a simpler homophonic structure. Originally composed for unison male voices and organ, the version here is based on the four-part a cappella version published a year later. The references to I and II in Ubi caritas et amor refer back to the original version where the altos alternate the text in two separate choirs. There is no requirement to replicate this when performing from the SAM-Klang edition.

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.