Lost Music by Mozart and Chopin Discovered
Image by Kelly Davidson
Was this the year you expected to finally get new music from Rihanna? Cardi B? Frank Ocean?
While we still can’t predict when we’ll hear from those artists again, we can say that, somehow, in 2024, they were beat to the punch by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Frédéric Chopin.
Mozart’s 'Ganz kleine Nachtmusik'
The lost Mozart piece is a 12-minute chamber work for a string trio (two violins and a bass) that was recently discovered in a municipal library in Leipzig, Germany, as part of an ongoing effort to compile a definitive list of all Mozart’s known works. While the exact date of composition is unknown, experts have guessed that it was written in the 1760s, when Mozart was anywhere between 10 and 13. Titled Serenade in C, the piece has been renamed “Ganz kleine Nachtmusik” (tr. “Quite Little Night Music”), likely a reference to Mozart’s famous 1789 composition “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (tr. “A Little Night Music”).
Watch the first ever performance of Mozart's newly unearthed chamber work:
Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor
While not as young as Mozart was, Chopin likely penned his “new” waltz in the 1830s, placing the Polish composer somewhere in his 20s. The composition was actually discovered in 2019, but it’s musical style and brevity—it’s only about a minute long—posed challenges to the authentication process, which involved both Chopin experts and archival specialists. The result has left little doubt that the piece is in fact by Chopin, and has the bonus of shedding light on the early days of the composer’s creative journey.
Listen to an interpretation of Chopin's Waltz in A Minor by the young Italian pianist and composer Gianluca Farullo:
While these kinds of rediscoveries aren’t frequent, they’re not uncommon, and have a way of making contemporary audiences feel closer to art and artists otherwise lost to time. When John Coltrane’s lost 1961 live album Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane (with Eric Dolphy) was unearthed in 2023, for example, it deepened listeners’ understanding of both Coltrane and Dolphy’s work performed during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. “Any new writings, recordings or even photographs help us to learn more about one of the most impactful and influential creatives in the history of humanity,” said ethnomusicologist Emmett G. Price III, dean of Africana Studies, about the significance of the discovery.
