A wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players (most commonly flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon). The term also applies to a composition for such a group.

Unlike the string quartet with its homogeneous blend of color, the instruments in a wind quintet differ from each other considerably in technique, idiom, and timbre. The modern wind quintet sprang from the ensemble favored in the court of Joseph II in late 18th century Vienna: two oboes, two clarinets, two (natural) horns, and two bassoons. The influence of Haydn's chamber writing suggested similar possibilities for winds, and advancements in the building of these instruments in that period made them more useful in small ensemble settings, leading composers to attempt smaller combinations.

It was Anton Reicha's twenty-four quintets, begun in 1811, and the nine quintets of Franz Danzi that established the genre, and their pieces are still standards of the repertoire. Though the form fell out of favor in the latter half of the 19th century, there has been renewed interest in the form by leading composers in the 20th century, and today the wind quintet is a standard chamber ensemble, valued for its versatility and variety of tone color.

The Wind Quintet, Op. 26, is a chamber-music composition by Arnold Schoenberg, composed in 1923–24. It is one of the earliest of Schoenberg's compositions to use twelve-tone technique.

History

Schoenberg's Wind Quintet was one of his first twelve-tone compositions (Schoenberg 1975, 225). It was composed in 1923–24, and individual sketches in the composer's sketchbook number 5 contain precise data on the progress of the composition. The world premiere took place on Schoenberg's fiftieth birthday, 13 September 1924. The score's dedication is "Dem Bubi Arnold" (To little Arnold), the composer's grandson, his daughter Gertrud and Felix Greissle's child (Butz 1988, 251).

Analysis

The Quintet is in four movements:

The work is laid out in the four-movement pattern of Classical chamber-music forms, using the thematic contrast usual in them (Neighbour 2001). In this way, Schoenberg sought to restore the innate expressive qualities of the forms of tonal music, and so the Quintet, along with the Suite for piano, op. 25, the Suite for septet, op. 29, the Third String Quartet, op. 30, and the Variations for Orchestra, represent the most extreme point of his neoclassicism (Rosen 1996, 88).

Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet, or as indicated by the original score, the Kvintet for Flöte, Obo, Klarinet, Horn og Fagot, Op. 43, was composed early in 1922 in Gothenburg, Sweden, where it was first performed privately at the home of Herman and Lisa Mannheimer on 30 April 1922. The first public performance was on 9 October 1922 in the smaller hall at the Odd Fellows Mansion in Copenhagen. It is considered a staple of the repertoire for wind quintet.

Background

According to his biographer Torben Meyer, Carl Nielsen started composing the wind quintet in the autumn of 1921 after hearing four members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet (flautist: Paul Hagemann, oboist: Svend C. Felumb, clarinettist: Aage Oxenvad, hornist: Hans Sørensen, bassoonist: Knud Lassen) rehearsing the Sinfonia Concertante by Mozart with the pianist Christian Christiansen, whom Nielsen was having a telephone conversation with while the winds rehearsed. It was these musicians he specifically had in mind when he wrote the piece.