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"Ganz kleine Nachtmusik" is the name of a piece of music by Mozart that was just discovered. (He later titled a piece "Eine kleine Nachtmusik")
The English press about this is translating it as "Very little night music" which seems wrong? I feel like either "Quite small night music" or "Completely small night music" would be more accurate.
When does "ganz" change from "quite" to "completely"? Is it ambiguous here?
@aaronpk "very little" has the feel of "not much" to me, that makes it sound weird. I would say that "ganz klein" is even smaller than "sehr klein" (very little), even being the smallest. When used in other contexts, e. g. "ganz voll", it would translate as "completely full". "Ganz" takes the role of "completely" as a qualifier for adjectives. So something along the lines of smallest/completely small/utterly small would be a better fit in my opinion.
@aaronpk There is a construct of saying "ganz schön" for "quite". So "Eine ganz schön kleine Nachtmusik" could be translated to "Quite small night music". I don't know at what point in language history the "schön" part ended up there, as it usually means "beautiful"
edit: This would actually rather be "pretty small night music". Language is amazing and weird :D And we also have the English counterpart to "schön" showing up in an equally interesting position