Piece for Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria (lost), K. 639
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Piece for Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria (K. 639) is a lost, doubtful item tentatively dated to 1766, when the composer was ten. No music survives: the key, instrumentation, length, and even the precise occasion remain unknown, and the attribution itself is treated with caution.
Mozart’s Life at the Time
In 1766 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was nearing the end of the family’s long western European tour (1763–1766), a period in which the child prodigy regularly performed before courts and cultivated patrons. The family returned eastward in autumn 1766 and reached Munich on 8 November, where they stayed and sought opportunities at the Bavarian court. That context—courtly presentation pieces connected with an elector’s household—fits the title attached to K. 639, though no secure documentation links the work to a specific date or performance.12
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Musical Character
Nothing can responsibly be said about the music itself. K. 639 is transmitted only as a title (“a piece” for Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria) without surviving score, incipit, or reliable description of forces; accordingly it is generally treated as a lost work of doubtful authenticity rather than a recoverable juvenilia composition.23
[1] Mozart family grand tour (background on the 1763–1766 journey and its court performances)
[2] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 639 (“Ein Stück” for Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria)
[3] Wikipedia overview of Mozart works of spurious or doubtful authenticity (context for doubtful attributions in Mozart’s catalogue)