Viola Part for a Contradance (lost), K. 626b/53
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Viola part for a contradance (K. 626b/53) is a lost, poorly documented item known only from a brief catalogue reference, with no surviving music to evaluate. Neither its date, place of origin, nor key can be established from the extant record, and its attribution is best treated as doubtful.
What Is Known
K. 626b/53 is listed in the Köchel supplement as a “viola part for a contradance” and is explicitly marked lost—that is, no notated musical text is currently known to survive in libraries or archives accessible to scholarship [1]. As a result, the work’s key, scoring beyond viola, date, and place of composition remain unknown, and it cannot be securely placed within Mozart’s biography or stylistic development.
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Given the thin documentation and the frequency with which short dance materials circulated anonymously or under later attributions, this entry is often approached as a work of doubtful authenticity rather than a securely attributable Mozart composition (a caution broadly applicable to many “spurious or doubtful” attributions in the secondary literature) [2].
Musical Content
No musical content can be described: the viola part itself is not extant, and no incipit, manuscript description, or concordant sources are provided in the readily available reference listings [1].
[1] Wikipedia: Köchel catalogue — entry list including K. 626b/53 (“Viola part for a contradance” marked lost).
[2] Wikipedia: Mozart symphonies of spurious or doubtful authenticity — overview of doubtful/spurious attributions in Mozart reception history (context for cautious attribution).