Listen to a Performance of Some New Mozart Music

Last week, I posted about the discovery of a “new” piece of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

A previously unknown piece of music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he was probably in his early teens has been uncovered at a library in Germany.

The piece dates to the mid to late 1760s and consists of seven miniature movements for a string trio lasting about 12 minutes, the Leipzig municipal libraries said in a statement on Thursday.

Via Smithsonian Magazine, here’s the one of the first public performances of the rediscovered work:

Researchers say the music fits stylistically with other works from the 1760s, when Mozart was between the ages of 10 and 13. Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the foundation, tells Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) that the young composer was no longer creating pieces that sounded like this one by the time he was in his late teens.

In his early years, however, Mozart wrote many chamber works like Serenade in C, which his father recorded on a list of his son’s compositions. Many of these works were thought to have been lost to history, as Leisinger says in the statement. Fortunately, this particular piece was saved — thanks to the composer’s sister.

“It looks as if — thanks to a series of favorable circumstances — a complete string trio has survived in Leipzig,” Leisinger adds. “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.”

(via open culture)

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