“Songs I” contains Dvorák’s first song compositions written from 1865 to 1882. This edition brings the project, which stretched over several years to publish Urtext editions of all the composer’s works for solo voice and piano, to a close.

Lesser-known songs by the young Dvorák are also included in this volume, of which the “Two Songs for Baritone” from the year 1865 appear here for the first time. The composer wrote these only a few months after “Cypresses”, his first work in this genre. Eleven songs of the cycle “Evening Songs” were published by various publishers during the composer’s lifetime; the ultimate song “Like the Moon in the Vault of Heaven” has not survived in its entirety and therefore appears in the appendix. In his early songs, the composer set not only texts by the leading Czech poets of his time to music, but also folk poetry.

The songs are presented in chronological order in volumes for high and low voice, each with underlaid vocal texts in three languages.