The seven choral songs, stylistically very diverse, show clear folk music traits together with Brahms’ characteristic leanings towards multiple choirs and to polyphonic or canonic writing. Brahms had a lifelong love of folk music and his fascination with early music techniques began as early as the time of his first meeting with Robert and Clara Schumann. Although we only see the full flowering of these compositional elements in his late choral works and symphonies, Brahms was already deeply immersed in the world of early music in his youth with his friend Joseph Joachim. Brahms’ mastery of the musical material is also evident when – depending on the emotional state he wants to illustrate and evoke – he effortlessly switches harmonic style between that of the early Protestant chorale, simple folk music harmonisation and the beginning of late Romanticism. Harmonically speaking, he even glimpses into the 20th century at certain points.

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.