Ganz kleine Nachtmusik

Ganz kleine Nachtmusik
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Portrait of Mozart at age 13 (January 1770)
Catalogue	K. 648
Composed	"mid to late 1760s"
Duration	about 12 minutes
Movements	7
Scoring	String trio

Ganz kleine Nachtmusik (German for "Very little night music"), K. 648, is the name given to a piece of music for string trio that was composed by Classical period composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) in the "mid to late 1760s" by the Leipzig municipal libraries, where the piece's re-discovery was announced in September 2024.

Composition

The piece itself is a string trio made while Mozart was a young teenager, and was apparently created prior to "Mozart’s first trip to Italy". It is made of "seven miniature movements for a string trio lasting about 12 minutes" according to the Leipzig libraries, which referred to the piece as "Ganz kleine Nachtmusik" in the Köchel catalogue.

Rediscovery

While compiling the Köchel catalogue's newest edition— an authoritative archive of all of Mozart’s documented musical works— classical music researchers rediscovered the manuscript of the previously unknown piece from the Carl Ferdinand Becker collection in Leipzig's music library. The researchers reported that the manuscript was made of "dark brown ink on medium-white handmade paper" with individually bound parts. The manuscript was believed to not be an original manuscript written by Mozart, and was instead believed to be a copy produced in 1780.

German musicologist Ulrich Leisinger, speaking for the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, stated that the piece was unique compared to other pieces made by Mozart at the time, which were primarily arias, symphonies, and piano music.

On 19 September, the rediscovered piece was first played for a modern audience in Salzburg, Austria, and was planned to be premiered in Germany on 21 September at the Leipzig Opera.