Köchel catalogue

Its numbers reflect the ongoing task of compiling the chronology of Mozart's works, and provide a shorthand reference to the compositions.

In the decades after Mozart's death in 1791 there were several attempts to catalogue his compositions, for example by Franz Gleißner and Johann Anton André (published in 1833), but it was not until 1862 that Ludwig von Köchel succeeded in producing a comprehensive listing.

Köchel divided the corpus into a main chronology of 626 works, and five appendices (Anhänge in German), abbreviated Anh.

I–V which comprise: Since Köchel published his original catalogue in 1863 (now referred to as K1), the dating of Mozart's compositions has been subject to constant revision.

[2][3] A major shortcoming of K1 was that there was no room to expand the strictly sequential numbering in the main catalogue to allow for any new discoveries or further reassessment of existing works.

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.

[9] In 2016, for the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death, Decca Classics and Deutsche Grammophon in partnership with the International Mozarteum Foundation released a box of 200 CDs with 2 hardback books with a new Mozart biography by Cliff Eisen and a newly developed short Köchel guide.