This Lost Mozart Composition Hasn’t Been Heard for Centuries. Now, You Can Listen to It

A 12-minute piece of music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been discovered in a library in Germany. Researchers think the composer wrote the previously unknown piece—called Serenade in C—when he was a young teenager.

The composition was hidden in the holdings of Germany’s Leipzig Municipal Libraries—some 280 miles north of Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born in 1756. By the age of 5, he was a child prodigy who toured Europe performing for royals and aristocrats. As a teenager, he built a reputation as a composer, spending a few years in Salzburg and Vienna before moving to Italy in 1769.

Mozart probably wrote the recently discovered composition in the mid- to late-1760s, according to a statement from the Leipzig Municipal Libraries. Library researchers were compiling an edition of the Köchel catalog, a comprehensive archive of Mozart’s work, when they stumbled across a mysterious bound manuscript containing a handwritten composition in brown ink.

W.A. Mozart - Serenata ex C - Eine ganz kleine Nachtmusik (Leipzig Premiere)

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The composition is attributed to “Wo[l]fgang Mozart.” The handwriting, however, is not Mozart’s, suggesting that the manuscript is a copy of the original composition. Researchers think it was made around 1780.

Serenade in C consists of seven miniature movements for a string trio (two violins and a bass), according to a statement from the International Mozarteum Foundation, a Salzburg-based nonprofit dedicated to Mozart’s life and work. The attribution to “Wo[l]fgang Mozart” indicates that the piece is from the composer’s youth, as he started regularly adding “Amadeo” to his name around 1769.

Researchers say the music fits stylistically with other works from the 1760s, when Mozart was between the ages of 10 and 13. Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the foundation, tells Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) that the young composer was no longer creating pieces that sounded like this one by the time he was in his late teens.

In his early years, however, Mozart wrote many chamber works like Serenade in C, which his father recorded on a list of his son’s compositions. Many of these works were thought to have been lost to history, as Leisinger says in the statement. Fortunately, this particular piece was saved—thanks to the composer’s sister.

“It looks as if—thanks to a series of favorable circumstances—a complete string trio has survived in Leipzig,” Leisinger adds. “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. Perhaps he wrote the trio specially for her.”

By the time Mozart fell ill and died at age 35, he had composed more than 600 works. Among his most enduring pieces are Requiem in D Minor, the Jupiter Symphony and operas such as Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro.

The newly discovered Serenade in C has been renamed Ganz kleine Nachtmusik in the Köchel catalog (presumably in reference to Mozart’s famous serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik). On September 19, when the new catalog was unveiled in Salzburg, a string trio played the rediscovered work.

The composition was performed again for a packed audience at the Leipzig Opera on September 21. According to DPA, three musicians played the piece again outside the opera house, where eager crowds were waiting.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.