Lasting about 12 minutes, a string trio dated to Mozart’s early teenage years has been rediscovered in a German library and just received its modern premiere.
Mozart Serenade in C© Leipziger Städtische BibliothekenA previously unknown string trio from Mozart’s early years has been discovered in the archives of the music library of the Leipzig Municipal Libraries, according to a statement from the institution, one of the largest public music libraries in Germany.
Consisting of seven miniature movements for two violins and bass (including two minuets) and lasting a total of some 12 minutes, the C major trio ‘is thought to have been written in the mid to late 1760s’, the researchers posit – likely during the composer’s earliest teenage years and pre-dating his first visit to Italy in 1769.
The manuscript in question is not in Mozart’s own hand but is an unsigned ‘copy or transcription that was made around 1780’, the parts of which have been bound separately.
The discovery was made during research to compile the latest edition of the thematic catalog of Mozart’s complete musical works, which has just been published by Breitkopf & Härtel and the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg under the title Köchel-Verzeichnis (60 years after the most recent previous updating).
The rediscovered trio, listed as ‘Serenate ex C’ in the Library’s Carl Ferdinand Becker collection, has been assigned Köchel number 648 and given the title Ganz kleine Nachtmusik in a punning allusion to Mozart’s beloved Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525.
‘Until now, the young Mozart has been familiar to us chiefly as a composer of keyboard music and of arias and sinfonias but 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’, according to Ulrich Leisinger, the head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation and editor of the new Köchel-Verzeichnis.
‘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. Perhaps he wrote the Trio specially for her and for her name day’.
The new Köchel-Verzeichnis edition additionally contains new entries on more than 90 works in the main section of the catalogue, including information on a number of Mozart compositions newly discovered while the edition was in preparation.
Ganz kleine Nachtmusik received its much-belated modern premiere on 19 September 2024 in Mozart’s native Salzburg, which was followed by the German premiere at Leipzig Opera on 21 September, with Vincent and David Geer playing the violin parts and Elisabeth Zimmermann on cello.
The first published edition of the rediscovered trio is based on a facsimile of the manuscript parts and is now accessible at ScoreExchange, SheetMusicPlus and SheetMusicDirect.
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