An oil portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart – Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik

Some time ago yours truly opined how strange it felt to speak on a new Beatles track when “Now and Then” was released. There was a bizarre sort of cognitive dissonance created by discussing the Fab Four’s latest swan song as one would anything else dropped on a given New Music Friday. It was as a though a piece of something that had been, and still is, a closed chapter in history suddenly came to life in conversation across the decades; a smartphone answering a call from a rotary. Considering how unique that experience was, it was surely just as strange, if not stranger, when this past September the minds that be of Classical music announced the discovery of a “new” – i.e. heretofore unknown and therefore lost, now rediscovered – serenade composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself among the pages of Leipzig’s music library. Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik (translating to “Very Little Night Music”) was found amongst attempts to compile the latest edition of the Köchel catalogue: the primary categorical volume by which Mozart’s works have been quantified for over a century. The discovery, or rather rediscovery, of this Serenade in C Major, now formally recognized in the Mozart canon as “K.648,” stunned both the sphere of “serious” music, and the world at large. The great gap of years between its composition and recovery made the sudden appearance of this little gem all the more miraculous, and all the more surreal. The internet at large seized upon this quickly – “New Mozart just dropped” became something of a trending meme unto itself. Jests aside (for the moment), Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik‘s return was without a doubt a great gift from the past to the present, a triumph of academic fastidiousness, and, if nothing else, proof positive of the power of libraries.

The world’s first commercial release of K.648 was released in October, shortly after the piece’s discovery, by Classical giant Deutsche Grammophon. The recording is pristine, sharp enough even to hear the in-drawn breaths of its performers, all of whom clearly brought their A game for the occasion. The piece itself is absolutely effervescent, and immediately recognizable as Mozart’s handiwork both from its own vivacious quality, and by how it immediately recalls some of his other, better known works. One wonders whether this and Mozart’s enduringly popular Eine Kleine Nachtmusik were given parallel appellations in light of similarities in both harmonic content and in the practical reasons for their creation – presumably just chances of some kind for the composer to churn out what would be, to him, a bit of inconsequential “little night music.” Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik is so animated that at times it seems almost jocular, such as in the quick, accented punches of its first movement. Popular perception of Mozart’s demeanor and character undoubtedly clashes at times with historical fact, but it is without a doubt that the man had a sparkling sense of humor, illustrated by the intrinsically jovial nature of his compositions. The childish demeanor of something like his depiction in Amadeus may be categorically over-exaggerated, but it is certainly true that Mozart was no stranger to peppering his music with blithe, at times ribald comedy. Doubters, look up K.231 and dare to say otherwise. A high-spirited ethos defines the piece at large, but never constrains it to a singular, immutable pattern. By the time we reach Movement V, the contour of the piece has run the gamut of loud and lively through to demure and delicate, then up and away again until the original theme’s complete reprisal in 8th and final movement. All that might sound as though Ganze Kleine Nachtmusik occupies a great bulk of time, but while it certainly contains multitudes, the composer’s epithet for this particular piece is entirely accurate; the whole thing from front to back lasts about 15 minutes.

Bright, buoyant, and and unburdened by copious length or austere intent, Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik is a brief and brilliant flare of the many things that made Mozart great. One hopes in light of its rediscovery that somewhere, somehow, there might still be more great music waiting to be found, buried in the annals of time. That said, should this indeed be the last word of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to time immemorial, then its a fitting, if quiet one – no great Requiem Mass or seminal Opera Buffa, just one last little treat from one of the most effortlessly luminous musical imaginations in recorded history.

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