Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Wikipedia

On August 10, 1787 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his chamber piece 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik.'". From the article:

"Eine kleine Nachtmusik[1] (Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major), K. 525, is a 1787 composition for a chamber ensemble by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music."[2] The work is written for an ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello with optional double bass but is often performed by string orchestras.[3]

Composition, publication, and reception Edit
The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787,[3] around the time Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni.[4] It is not known why it was composed.[5] Hildesheimer, 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 recorded.[6]

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."[7] 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.[8]

The work was not published until about 1827, long after Mozart's death, by Johann André in Offenbach am Main.[3] It had been sold to this publisher in 1799 by Mozart's widow Constanze, part of a large bundle of her husband's compositions.

Today, the serenade is widely performed and recorded; indeed, both Jacobson and Hildesheimer opine that the serenade is the most popular of all Mozart's works.[9] 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."