Song of the Day 9/24: Wolfgang Mozart, “Eine Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dropped a new single this weekend. No, really. Music archivists digging through manuscripts in the Leipzig Municipal Library found the transcription of music for a string trio that, though not in his hand, is credited to “Wolfgang Mozart.”

Mozart scholars are over the moon – it’s the classical-music equivalent of a new release from Prince’s vaults.

According to Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation and editor of the latest iteration of Köchel, an extensive catalogue of the Austrian composer’s work that’s been in circulation for 160 years, Mozart’s father Leopold maintained a list of chamber works his son composed. While all of these pieces have been lost, Leisinger said, “it looks as if, thanks to a series of favorable circumstances, a complete string trio has survived in Leipzig.”

He further noted the piece’s significance in Mozart’s earlier body of work, since “until now, the young Mozart has been familiar to us chiefly as a composer of keyboard music and of arias and sinfonias.”

“Eine Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik” was apparently written by a teenage Mozart, after he had finished a three-year concert tour of Europe and composed his first symphony. It got its public premier in Leipzig over the weekend.