Köchel catalogue

This is a complete list of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For a selective list of his works, grouped by genre, see List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K. or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed. Thus, the piece is designated K. 626 or KV 626. Köchel catalogue numbers are not only an attempt to establish a chronology of Mozart's works, but also provide a helpful shorthand to refer to them.

History

In the decades after Mozart's death there were several attempts to catalogue his compositions, for example by Franz Gleißner and Johann Anton André (published 1833), but it was not until 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel succeeded in producing a comprehensive one. Köchel's 551-page catalogue was titled Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämmtlicher Tonwerke W. A. Mozarts (Chronological-thematic Catalogue of the Complete Musical Works of W. A. Mozart).^[1] The catalogue included the opening bars of each piece, known as an incipit.

Köchel attempted to arrange the works in chronological order, but the compositions written before 1784 could only be estimated. Since Köchel's work, many more pieces have been found, re-attributed, and re-dated, requiring three catalogue revisions. These revisions, especially the third edition by Alfred Einstein (1937), and the sixth edition by Franz Giegling, Gerd Sievers, and Alexander Weinmann (1964), incorporated many corrections.

List of existing Mozart compositions

To maintain as much of the original K-numbering of the list as possible, while re-ordering in the revised, chronological sequence, letters were added to the new numbers. The following list shows Köchel's original designation (K¹) and the sixth edition (K⁶). Other addenda and supplements to the catalogue are marked Anhang. (This has been abbreviated to 'Anh.' in the list below.)