A hitherto-unknown piece of music by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was recently discovered by researchers the Leipzig Municipal Libraries.
The sheet music itself was not scribed by Mozart, the composer of such famous works as The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Requiem (personally, I’m partial his Symphony No. 40). The recently uncovered manuscript is a copy, written around 1780, that the copyist attributed to a “Wolfgang Mozart.” The lack of Mozart’s middle name in the copyist’s signature suggests that Mozart wrote the piece before 1769, when he started to include the middle of his moniker, according to a Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg release.
The piece is a 12-minute-long work in C major, written for two violins and a bass. It has been catalogued in Köchel, the catalogue of Mozart’s work, as KV 648, but is also dubbed “Ganz kleine Nachtmusik” and “Serenate ex C.” The piece consists of seven miniature movements. Based on the composition’s approximate timing, Mozart was between 10 and 13 years old when he wrote it.
Until the era in which KV 648 was written, Mozart was generally known for his keyboard music, arias, and sinfonias, according Ulrich Leisinger, the head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation and editor of the latest version of Köchel, in the release. Leisinger added that, by the time Mozart was 17, he probably wouldn’t have written music in that style anymore.
“We know from a list drawn up by Leopold Mozart that he wrote many other chamber works in his youth, all of them unfortunately lost,” said Leisinger. “It looks as if – thanks to a series of favourable circumstances – a complete string trio has survived in Leipzig. The source was evidently Mozart’s sister, and so it is tempting to think that she preserved the work as a memento of her brother.”
According to the German outlet MDR, the piece was played in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg on Thursday, and debuted in Germany on Saturday at the Leipzig Opera. You can hear a string trio playing a bit of Mozart via the German publication ZDF Heute here.
The refreshing addition to Mozart’s catalogue comes just a year after new insights into the life of Beethoven, the great German pianist and composer. Research published last year found that Beethoven had serious liver problems and a hepatitis infection before his death in 1827. Mozart is in the news for a much more pleasant reason, but here’s hoping we discover more about these composers in the new future, even nearly two centuries since their deaths.
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