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And now there’s more of that extraordinary phenomenon to appreciate. Sonja Anderson, with big news…

A 12-minute piece of music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been discovered in a library in Germany. Researchers think the composer wrote the previously unknown piece—called Serenade in C—when he was a young teenager.

The composition was hidden in the holdings of Germany’s Leipzig Municipal Libraries—some 280 miles north of Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born in 1756. By the age of 5, he was a child prodigy who toured Europe performing for royals and aristocrats. As a teenager, he built a reputation as a composer, spending a few years in Salzburg and Vienna before moving to Italy in 1769.

Mozart probably wrote the recently discovered composition in the mid- to late-1760s, according to a statement from the Leipzig Municipal Libraries. Library researchers were compiling an edition of the Köchel catalog, a comprehensive archive of Mozart’s work, when they stumbled across a mysterious bound manuscript containing a handwritten composition in brown ink [pictured above].

The composition is attributed to “Wo[l]fgang Mozart.” The handwriting, however, is not Mozart’s, suggesting that the manuscript is a copy of the original composition. Researchers think it was made around 1780.

Serenade in C consists of seven miniature movements for a string trio (two violins and a bass), according to a statement from the International Mozarteum Foundation, a Salzburg-based nonprofit dedicated to Mozart’s life and work. The attribution to “Wo[l]fgang Mozart” indicates that the piece is from the composer’s youth, as he started regularly adding “Amadeo” to his name around 1769…

… In his early years… 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.”…

… The newly discovered Serenade in C has been renamed Ganz kleine Nachtmusik in the Köchel catalog (presumably in reference to Mozart’s famous serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik)…

More than 250 years after a teenage Mozart wrote “Serenade in C,” a copy of the piece has surfaced: “This Lost Mozart Composition Hasn’t Been Heard for Centuries. Now, You Can Listen to It,” from @SmithsonianMag.

* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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As we listen, we might spare a thought for Miles Davis; he died on this date in 1991. Rolling Stone described him as “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time, not to mention one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.” Over a five-decade career (which began when he dropped out of Juilliard), Davis played bebop with Charlie Parker, paved the way for cool jazz with Birth of the Cool, pioneered hard bop, assembled a quintet (that included saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers) and yielded ‘Round About Midnight, led a jazz orchestra (that recorded Kind of Blue among other albums), worked with bassist Ron Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock, drummer Tony Williams, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter to create the post-bop genre, and created jazz fusion with Bitches Brew.

In discussing Birth of the Cool, jazz great Azar Lawrence said of Davis what countless others have said of Davis and his other contributions: “It was such a phenomenal expression of artistry. It was like something created by Picasso or Bach or Mozart, or somebody of that stature of expression. It’s a foundational work and a musical landmark.”

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