When Ludwig Ritter von Kšchel compiled his Thematic Catalogue of Wolfgang Mozart's music he added an Appendix ("Anhang") of doubtful or lost works. The work he placed at position 220 on the list (which made no effort to be chronological) was known only from a list of incipits (first few measures of each movement) that had been prepared during Mozart's lifetime, but had since been lost.

In 1982 the Odense, Denmark, municipal orchestra moved to a new facility. Their archivist-librarian, Gunnar Thygesen, examined a batch of music which someone had found in the basement of the town hall in 1943 and sent to the orchestra's library; even then no one had looked at it for over a hundred years. Among other Classical Era symphonies Thygesen found a set of parts for the lost K.Anh. 200, attributed to "Signor Mozart.". The task for musicologists was to determine if this document was an authentic Wolfgang Mozart symphony. Among the clues was a list drawn up in 1797 of the contents of the Odense Music Club's library. Among them was a Mozart symphony in a minor. Further investigation suggests it may have been a symphony purchased from a music dealer named Johann Christoph Westphal, of Hamburg, who had advertised a series of works he attributed to Mozart as early as the mid-1780s. Westphal was also the person who sold a bundle of Mozart works to Breitkopf & HŠrtel, which was the source of the incipits on which Kšchel relied. So the authenticity of this symphony depends Westphal being correct and truthful as to the identity of his merchandise. Dramatic as the appearance of a "new Mozart symphony" was in the 1980s, no one can say whether it is really music by Mozart. (Incidentally, the attribution to "Signor Mozart" does not exclude either Leopold Mozart or the non related Philip Kajatan Mozart.

The symphony is written for strings and pairs of oboes, bassoons, and horns, with harpsichord continuo. This orchestration (with bassoon parts independent of the bass line) and the emotional so-called "Sturm and Drang" style tend to date it to the early 1770s, whoever wrote it. Commentators are thus reduced to forming their opinion based on style, and can point to items of similarity and items of difference from Mozart's norm. It appears that the majority of experts is lining up against its authenticity. The first movement is emotional, the second is in a pastoral mode, and the finale includes "alla Turca" elements. It is an attractive work, in any event.

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