SFZ MUSIC, the independent label for HIS MAJESTYS SAGBUTTS & CORNETTS, are pleased to announce their latest release, a ground-breaking collaboration between two leading experts in historical performance Jane Booth, one of the finest players of the chalameau and early clarinet, teams up with John Irving, Director of the Institute of Musical Research at the University of London, to present a programme of exceptional grace, beauty, and depth. Clarinets by Arrangement offers an unusual perspective on some familiar chamber works from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, along with some less familiar repertoire that is well worth discovering. Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, K.589 and Beethoven’s Horn Sonata, Op.17 are presented here in arrangements made around the turn of the nineteenth century for clarinet, or basset horn, and piano. Underlying Clarinets by Arrangement is a belief – drawing on a range of contemporary documents including treatises, composers’ letters and contemporary reviews – that ‘the music is not the score’ and that a fundamental aspect of music from the later eighteenth century is the sheer provisionality of its musical texts, which are not so much the end of a compositional process as a stage in its ongoing journey to be continued by the performers.