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Ludwig von Köchel's chronological numbering scheme was simple, but bound to cause problems for his successors.

Ludwig Ritter von Köchel published his famous catalog of Mozart's compositions in 1862. His concept, to number the works in chronological order, was simple in theory. But it was bound to cause headaches for those who followed.

Since the first edition, there have been five revisions of Köchel's work. Only two are significant: the third edition, revised by Alfred Einstein in 1936; and the sixth, edited in 1964 by Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann and Gerd Sievers. The latter edition incorporates surviving fragments and sketches as well as newly discovered works, and it revises the dates assigned to many of the compositions.

In updating the catalog, the quandary editors faced was that Köchel's first-edition numbers had become integrated into virtually every document related to Mozart, including books, scores, concert programs and recordings. So even though modern scholarship could correct the dates of many compositions, tradition would not allow the catalog numbers to be simply rearranged.

The problem was "solved" by appending lowercase (and, later, uppercase) letters to the original numbers. This allowed new designations to be inserted between older ones. For example, Mozart's Missa solemnis in C minor, "Waisenhaus," originally designated K. 139, became K. 114a (between K. 114 and K. 115) in Einstein's edition, and K. 47a (between K. 47 and K. 48) in the sixth.

This solution works, but it can be confusing. After all, it's much simpler to refer to Mozart's "Little" G Minor Symphony as K. 183 (first edition) than as K. 173dB (sixth edition). Because of this, many modern publications have adopted a compromise, following Köchel's original scheme whenever possible and using later designations only for works discovered (or reconstructed) after 1862.

Neal Zaslaw, professor of music at Cornell University and editor of the next edition of the catalog, writes that The New Köchel will use a simplified numbering method, based as much as possible on Köchel's original scheme. (See Zaslaw's essay, Der neue Köchel.)

The Mozart Project uses the following convention in its use of Köchel numbers: Whenever possible, the original, first-edition designation is used. If there is a distinct sixth-edition designation, that number is separated from the first by a slash. (To continue example from above, the Missa solemnis in C minor is designated as K. 139/47a.) If there is no first-edition designation, then only the sixth-edition number is used.