Previously unknown Mozart string trio composition discovered in German library

More than 230 years after his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is releasing new music. While the famous classical composer died in 1791 at the age of 35, according to Agence France-Presse A previously unknown piece music experts believe was written by a teenage Mozart was recently discovered in a library in Germany.

The 12-minute piece referred to as “Ganz kleine Nachtmusik” dates from the mid-to-late 1760s and is described as consisting of seven miniature movements for a string trio according to a statement from the Leipzig Municipal Libraries. Researchers reportedly discovered the piece in the Leipzig music library when compiling the latest edition of the so-called “Köchel catalog,” an exhaustive, chronological list of all known Mozart compositions.

Although the discovered manuscript was not personally written by Mozart, researchers said it is believed to be a copy of the original created in 1780. The piece was performed for the first time by a string trio at the unveiling of the latest edition of the catalog in Salzburg on Thursday ( September 19) and will have its German premiere at the Leipzig Opera on Saturday (September 21).

“Since the inspiration for this apparently came from Mozart's sister, it is tempting to imagine that she kept the work as a memento of her brother,” Ulrich Leisinger of the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg said in a statement about the work, the which is unique. because until now researchers considered Mozart mainly as a composer of piano music, arias and symphonies.

Köchel's catalog described the piece as “preserved in a single source, in which the author's attribution suggests that the work was written before Mozart's first trip to Italy” in December 1769, when the child prodigy was only 13. years.