I promised a more “musical” topic for this week, and what could be more musical than a new work by Mozart? So, on May 16th, the new edition of the Köchel Catalogue – that is, the Catalogue of Mozart’s Works, which is continually enriched and re-published to this day – was presented in Athens! But first, what does the existence of an official Catalogue of Works mean? Composers, with some exceptions of course, do not prove to be particularly diligent in compiling lists of their works. Thus, this – often titanic – task is undertaken by specialists, usually musicologists. The official catalogue serves to record all possible versions of a work and to add or remove works from a composer’s list depending on the evidence available as to whether a work belongs to the creator in question or not. I assure you that many reclassifications of works by composers like Mozart and Haydn have occurred in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

The Catalogue of Works sometimes resembles the gold rush of El Dorado (and sometimes it’s as exciting as an Indiana Jones adventure), as considerable evidence is needed to certify that a work should be attributed to composer X or Y. So, at the event organized by the Mozarteum Hellas association in collaboration with the Musicians’ Horizons Conservatory and the Austrian Embassy, the new catalogue was presented, which is naturally interesting. However, it becomes even more interesting when a new work is added to the catalogue and when it is presented to the public! Of course, the discovery of a new work, which has been assigned catalogue number 648, has been announced. It is a trio for two violins and a cello, which was first performed in September 2024. So, it was time for its premiere performance in Greece these days. And where was this work found? Naturally, in a great music library, that of Leipzig, being part of the broader archival collection of Karl Ferdinand Becker, a highly esteemed organist and musicologist of the 19^th century, who was prolific and an important figure in Germany’s musical life. What did he do as a good researcher? He kept the manuscript he found in his archive so that other musicologist successors in the 21^st century could deal with it and finally bring it to light.

This edition of the Catalogue is the 9^th to be published, with the first having appeared in 1862. And since then, much has happened, of course! Suffice it to say that when I was studying music (only 25 years ago), the available Catalogue ended at Köchel number 626, which was the unfinished Requiem, while the work presented a few days ago bears the number 648, and now 721 works (!!) have been included in the Catalogue. Why is this happening? K. 648 is a complete work and, beyond any doubt, by Mozart. The remaining works up to 721 are essentially not complete works (meaning only fragments have been found), or it is not certain that they are by Mozart, or they are mentioned in sources but the manuscript has never been found. So, K. 648 is brand new and fresh for the simple reason that it is complete and definitely a work by Mozart. Incidentally, in the new catalogue, the chronological order of things has been abandoned, so K. 648, which is an early work, is placed in its appropriate sequence based on when it was first found, not when it was certified to be by Mozart.

If it confused you, that’s okay! Welcome to my world (and others like me…). I assure you, it’s fascinating! And to prove it to you, here’s the recording of the work for you to judge for yourselves. Happy listening!