A new piece of music composed by Mozart is discovered in Leipzig

A previously unknown piece of music likely composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his youth was recently discovered in a library in Germany.

The piece, which dates from the mid to late 1760s, consists of seven miniature movements for a string trio. It lasts about 12 minutes, researchers from the Leipzig Municipal Libraries said in a statement.

Researchers discovered the work in the city's music library while compiling the latest edition of the so-called Koechel catalogue, the definitive archive of Mozart's musical works.

The piece is referred to as "Ganz kleine Nachtmusik" in the new Koechel catalog, according to the Leipzig library.

The Koechel catalog describes the piece as "preserved in a single source, in which the attribution of the author suggests that the work was written before Mozart's first trip to Italy".

The newly discovered manuscript, which consists of dark brown ink on medium white handmade paper, was not written by Mozart himself, but is believed to be a copy made around 1780, researchers said.

The young Mozart was known to scholars until now "mainly as a composer of piano music, arias and symphonies," Ulrich Leisinger of the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg said in a statement.

Mozart's father had alerted academics to the existence of "many other chamber music compositions" by his son that were thought to have been lost until the appearance of the string trio, Leisinger said.

"Since the inspiration for this apparently came from Mozart's sister, it is tempting to imagine that she kept the piece as a memento of her brother," Leisinger said.

Born in 1756, Mozart was a rare child who began composing at a very early age under the tutelage of his father.

The piece was performed by a string trio at the unveiling of Koechel's new catalog in the Austrian city of Salzburg on Thursday, and will have its German premiere at the Leipzig Opera on Saturday.

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