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Eine kleine Nachtmusik
The Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The work is more commonly known by the title Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music". The work is written for a chamber ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello with optional double bass, but is often performed by string orchestras.
Composition, publication, and reception
The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni. It is not known why it was composed. Hildesheimer (1991, 215), noting that most of Mozart's serenades were written on commission, suggests that this serenade, too, was a commission, whose origin and first performance were not committed to record.
The traditionally used name of the work comes from the entry Mozart made for it in his personal catalog, which begins, "Eine kleine Nacht-Musik." As Zaslaw and Cowdery point out, Mozart almost certainly was not giving the piece a special title, but only entering in his records that he had completed a little serenade.
The first known recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik is that of John Barbirolli dating from 1928. Today the serenade is widely performed and recorded; indeed both Jacobson (2003, 38) and Hildesheimer (1992, 215) opine that the serenade is the most popular of all Mozart's works. Of the music, Hildesheimer writes, "even if we hear it on every street corner, its high quality is undisputed, an occasional piece from a light but happy pen."
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