The Third Sketchbook (lost) (K. 32a)
von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Third Sketchbook (lost), K. 32a, is a reported notebook of juvenile keyboard material associated with the Mozart family’s stay in the Netherlands in 1765. No music from the source survives today, and its attribution is often treated as doubtful.
Mozart's Life at the Time
In 1765, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was nine years old and travelling with his family on the Grand Tour; the Köchel catalogue associates the lost Third Sketchbook (K. 32a) with the Netherlands during this period. Later documentation indicates that Mozart’s widow, Constanze Mozart, still possessed a notebook she called “Capricci” in 1799, and that it was loaned out for copying before subsequently disappearing—one of several early sources that later became separated from the family archive. [1]
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Musical Character
Because the manuscript is lost, no key, instrumentation, movement layout, or even reliable incipits can be described from the page itself. What can be said is limited to the sketchbook’s traditional identification as a collection of “caprices” (and related contrapuntal items in some secondary accounts), which—if the attribution is genuine—would fit the improvisatory and exploratory keyboard writing expected of Mozart at nine, in a travel context where he was frequently asked to demonstrate quick invention and learned style. Modern reference discussions of doubtful/spurious Mozart attributions provide a useful cautionary frame for treating K. 32a as a work of uncertain authenticity rather than as secure evidence for Mozart’s development. [2]
[1] Mozarteum (DME): English transcription PDF of a 1799 letter from Constanze Mozart to Breitkopf & Härtel; editorial note mentions “KV 32a (The Third Sketchbook)” and that the “Capricci” have been lost.
[2] Wikipedia: overview article on Mozart symphonies of spurious or doubtful authenticity (used here as a general reference point for the editorial caution around doubtful/spurious attributions).