Night Music Its Composer May Never Have Heard

Vienna, 10 August 1787. Mozart, thirty-one, opens a small notebook. For three years he had been logging every work he finished there, with the date and the first few bars. That day he wrote: "A little night music." In German, Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

Welcome to the fourth stop. Mozart was extremely busy at this time. He was writing Don Giovanni, due for its premiere in Prague that autumn, and in May he had lost his father, Leopold. It is hard to believe that a serenade this bright and tidy came out of such a summer.

A serenade was music for evenings and open air, or for parties. But no one knows who this one was for or where it was meant to be played. There is no record of it being performed while Mozart was alive. It was not published until 1827, long after his death.

There is another mystery. Mozart's catalogue lists the piece in five movements, but we hear only four. A minuet that once stood second is missing. Where the page that held it went, no one knows.

Now let's hear the first movement. The moment it starts, every instrument lines up and leaps upward together, as if bounding up a staircase. It sounds like someone flinging open a door and calling out, "Good evening!"