Symphony in A minor “Odense” (spurious), K. Anh.C 11.18
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The so-called Symphony in A minor “Odense” (K. Anh.C 11.18; also circulated as K. 16a) is a doubtful work only once attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). Although it has sometimes been dated to 1765, the surviving source does not securely connect it with Mozart, and modern scholarship generally treats the attribution as spurious.
What Is Known
A complete set of orchestral parts (not an autograph score) was discovered in 1982 in Odense, Denmark—hence the work’s nickname [1]. A title-page note indicates the material belonged to an Odense musical society by 1793 at the latest, while paper evidence points to 1779 for the parts themselves [1]. On the basis of an incipit, Alfred Einstein once proposed an early date (1765), but later writers have questioned both the dating and the attribution; the work was ultimately filed among “works of doubtful authenticity” in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe [1]. It remains listed among Mozart symphonies of spurious or doubtful authenticity [2].
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Musical Content
Because the source transmits performance parts rather than a composer’s manuscript, stylistic observations have played an outsized role. Several scholars have argued that the Odense work differs in idiom from Mozart’s securely authenticated early symphonies, and it is not generally accepted today as a Mozart symphony [1]. (On modern library and score platforms it is typically flagged as spurious.) The music itself is best approached, therefore, as an anonymous mid- to late-18th-century orchestral symphony preserved under Mozart’s name, rather than as a document of the nine-year-old composer’s development in 1765.
[1] Wikipedia: “Symphony, K. Anh. C 11.18” (Odense discovery, source status, provenance notes, authenticity debate, NMA placement).
[2] Wikipedia: “Mozart symphonies of spurious or doubtful authenticity” (lists the Odense A minor symphony among doubtful/spurious works).