This standard work of the cello literature has been extracted from volume II of the Complete Works for Violoncello and Pianoforte (BA 9096 and BA 9097) which was published in 2016. Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd edited the scholarly-critical edition of “Song without Words”.

This work is not based on the surviving autograph manuscript, which could not have been the basis for the posthumous first edition, but rather on the only plausible source: the German first edition itself. This was published in 1868 as op. 109 and is unquestionably based on an untraceable complete final manuscript, perhaps once previously owned by the dedicatee, French cellist Lisa Barbier Cristiani.

The publication is free from editorial amendments and modern performance instructions and provides an excellent basis for musical interpretation.