During his summer holiday of 1842 Mendelssohn wrote four piano miniatures in each of the albums of two children to whom he was related.

Years later he revised the pieces. In so doing, he deleted two of them, put the remaining ones in a new sequence and published them under the title “Children’s Pieces”. Mendelssohn died shortly before the edition was published in 1848. Even though published posthumously, Mendelssohn initiated the first edition himself which is why it is the primary source for our edition. The two pieces that Mendelssohn did not include in his opus 72 are contained in the appendix.