When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a young teenager, he composed a 12-minute piece of music called Serenade in C.
The long-lost piece was recently discovered in the Leipzig Municipal Libraries in Germany. The libraries are located about 280 miles north of Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born in 1756.
According to the Leipzig Municipal Libraries, Mozart most likely wrote the composition in the mid-to-late 1760s.
Library researchers had been putting together the Köchel catalog, a comprehensive archive of Mozart’s work, when they came across a manuscript of a musical composition handwritten in brown ink.
The composition was credited to Wolfgang Mozart, but the handwriting did not belong to him, suggesting that the manuscript was a copy of the original sheet music and was made around 1780.
Serenade in C was made for two violins and a bass. It consists of seven miniature movements.
Based on the composition’s timing and style, Mozart was between the ages of 10 and 13 when he wrote it.
The attribution to Wolfgang Mozart indicated that the piece was from the composer’s youth. Around 1769, he started adding “Amadeo” to his name. By the time he was in his late teens, he was no longer creating pieces with that kind of sound.
Mozart was a child prodigy by the age of five. He toured Europe, performing for royals and other figures of nobility.
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When he was a teenager, he earned a reputation as a composer. He moved to Italy in 1769 after spending some time in Salzburg and Vienna.
In his early years, Mozart wrote many works, such as Serenade in C. Unfortunately, most of those works were lost over time. This particular piece was saved by the composer’s sister.
“It looks as if—thanks to a series of favorable circumstances—a complete string trio has survived in Leipzig,” said Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation.
“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.”
At age 35, Mozart succumbed to illness and died. By then, he had composed over 600 works. His most well-known pieces are Requiem in D Minor, the Jupiter Symphony, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro.
Serenade in C has been renamed Ganz kleine Nachtmusik in the Köchel catalog. The new catalog was unveiled on September 19 in Salzburg.
A string trio played the piece during the event. On September 21, the composition was performed again at the Leipzig Opera.
The new addition to Mozart’s catalog comes a year after it was discovered that Beethoven endured serious liver problems and a hepatitis infection before dying in 1827. Hopefully, more insights into these composers’ lives can be gathered in the near future.