2024-09-27 09:07:24
A hitherto unknown work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was found by researchers in the music library in Leipzig. According to experts, the composition from the 1860s was probably created in the composer’s early youth, the website of the Central German Radio and Television MDR reported.
According to the researchers, the score dates from around 1780, but it was not signed. “Although it is a manuscript, it is a transcription of Mozart’s original,” says the director of the Leipzig library, Susanne Metz. “Mozart’s composition has been in the library’s holdings for more than 100 years. Now that it has been examined by Mozart specialists in Salzburg, we can confirm that it is indeed Mozart’s work,” he adds.
Many compositions are attributed to Mozart. “It will take a lot of work to be able to say: we are convinced that this is a composition by the young Mozart,” stresses musicologist and director of the Salzburg Mozarteum’s scientific department Ulrich Leisinger.
The piece bears the additional title Ganz kleine Nachtmusik (loosely translated as Very Little Night Music), a reference to Mozart’s famous Little Night Music, Serenade No. 13 for String Quartet and Double Bass from 1787.
The 12-minute Serenade ex C consists of seven movements for string trio, lasts about 12 minutes and is believed to have been composed in the mid to late 1760s, the Leipzig City Library said Thursday.
The German premiere of the piece was planned for this Saturday at a half-hour concert at the Leipzig Opera House. Already on Thursday, it was performed for the first time in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg as part of the presentation of the revised Köchel catalog, which is a catalog of all the composer’s compositions.
Köchel’s list, sometimes also Köchel’s catalog (German Köchelverzeichnis) was compiled in 1862 by the Austrian botanist, musicologist, writer, composer, editor and lover of Mozart’s music Ludwig Alois Ferdinand Knight von Köchel.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived between 1756 and 1791. He composed more than 600 compositions.
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