A composition for five solo string instruments; the term is usually applied to works written since the mid-18th century rather than to earlier consort music in five parts. The origin of the genre is frequently traced to the Italian sinfonia and concerto or to the generically fictive German divertimento, but it is closer in spirit to the south German and Austrian symphony, including works in five parts whose style is often indistinguishable from one-to-a-part solo ensemble music. Characterized chiefly by refinements in writing for a strings-only texture, the history of the genre is closely bound up with that of the string quartet. At the same time, its greater mass often resulted in works more closely approximating an orchestral style; only Mozart appears successfully and consistently to have composed quintets exclusively in the ‘sonata’ style.
The quintet was first cultivated in Austria during the 1750s and early 1760s, chiefly at monastic institutions. The majority of these works, by J.N. Tischer, J.M. Malzat and F.J. Aumann, are usually titled ‘divertimento’, which at the time designated soloistic instrumental music in general and was compatible with a variety of scorings, styles and character. Almost invariably for two violins, two violas and cello or violone, the early Austrian quintet relied heavily on thematic repetition between first violin and first viola, with the other voices mostly relegated to accompaniment; frequently the two lead voices move in parallel 3rds or 6ths. Michael Haydn's more sophisticated and stylistically advanced Notturni of 1773 (p108 and p109), as well as Mozart's k174 (also 1773 and frequently said to have been modelled on Haydn's quintets), belong to this tradition, as do early quintets by Gassmann and Vanhal. The ‘modern’ title Quintetto and a scoring of two violins, two violas and cello did not become common until the 1780s, chiefly in Vienna; even then, ‘older’ titles and alternative scorings continued to be cultivated, by Michael Haydn (Divertimento for two violins, two violas and double bass, p110, 1784), Dittersdorf (k185–90, 1789, for two violins, viola and two cellos) and Anton Wranitzky (op.8, c1801–2, for violin, two violas and two cellos).
Elsewhere the quintet was promoted less intensely. The earliest French examples, by Cambini, who composed more than 100 quintets, date from about 1770; the first Italian quintets may be Sammartini's (for three violins, viola and basso, 1773; six quintets by Francesco Zannetti, published in London in 1763, include a part for basso continuo). Boccherini and Gaetano Brunetti, both Italian-born, were attached to the Spanish court; like Cambini, they began writing quintets just after 1770 (Boccherini: op.10, composed 1771, published in Paris, 1774; Brunetti: op.1, published in Paris, 1771). Boccherini's numerous elegant, texturally imaginative and formally inventive quintets for two cellos in particular are little beholden to national traditions of quintet composition; widely disseminated throughout Europe in both manuscript copies and printed editions, they were highly influential. Some later quintets, composed for the cello-loving Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, are sometimes said to have stimulated Mozart to compose quintets, but that is unlikely. In America, an early and isolated set of six quintets was composed in 1789 by the Moravian J.F. Peter.
Mozart neither ‘invented’ nor ‘perfected’ the quintet, which was a popular and widely cultivated genre in Vienna of the 1780s; locally available works, all of them preceding Mozart's, included quintets by Albrechtsberger, Pleyel, Hoffmeister, Boccherini, Sterkel, Piticchio and Anton Zimmermann. But his were the earliest consistently composed on a four-movement plan, similar to the string quartet (most earlier Viennese quintets are in three movements) and the first to exploit fully the rich textural possibilities of the medium, including antiphonal effects between upper and lower groupings of instruments (k516, k593) and real five-part polyphony (k593 and 614). Quintets by Pleyel and Hoffmeister, while skilfully crafted and attractive, generally lack textural variety.
During the 1790s and the early decades of the 19th century the string quintet was second in popularity only to the string quartet, supplanting the earlier string trio. Viennese quintet composers of this time included Beethoven, Eybler, E.A. Förster, Gyrowetz, Hänsel, Krommer, Pichl and the brothers Wranitzky; arrangements for quintet of popular opera tunes, symphonies and other works were also common. A concerto-like style of quintet, usually for solo violin but sometimes for solo cello, with quartet accompaniment, similar in character to the quatuor brilliant, flourished after about 1805; Antoine Reicha's Variations on a Russian theme for cello and string quartet and Ignaz Schuppanzigh's Solo brillant et facile avec Quatuor are prominent examples, as is Henry Vieuxtemps' later Souvenir d'Amerique, Yankee doodle: Variations burlesques avec Quatuor op.17. Other scorings are also frequently found. Schubert's only work in the genre, d956 (1828), belongs to a longstanding tradition of two-cello quintets which in the early years of the 19th century was extensively represented by George Onslow; later examples include Ferdinand Ries's Souvenir d'Italie op.183 (1836), Cherubini's E minor quintet (1837), an early quintet by Borodin (1853–4), Ethel Smyth's op.1 (1884), Glazunov's op.39 (1891–2) and Henry Cowell's Ensemble (1924).
An ensemble of two violins, two violas and cello nevertheless remained the standard; in Vienna it is best represented during the first half of the 19th century in works by E.A. Förster, Joseph Mayseder, Sigismund Neukomm and Andreas and Bernard Romberg. After about 1820, however, the genre was also widely cultivated outside Vienna, by Onslow, Mendelssohn (opp.18 and 87), Ferdinand Ries, Louis Spohr and Friedrich Fesca; the quintets of both Spohr and Fesca are noteworthy for their concertante first violin parts. Brahms's two magnificent quintets, opp.88 and 111 (1882 and 1890), no longer belong to a specifically Viennese tradition but to a pan-European style also cultivated by Bruckner (1879), Carl Nielsen, Dvořák (op.77, 1875, for two violins, viola, cello and double bass) and Anton Rubinstein.
Since Brahms, the quintet has been little cultivated. Among the few 20th-century examples, quintets by S.I. Taneyev (opp.14 and 16, 1901 and 1904), Bax (1908), Cowell (Ensemble, includes three thundersticks in addition to two violins, viola and two cellos), Martinů (1927), Milhaud (three quintets, 1952–6, each differently scored) and Roger Sessions (1958) are particularly significant.
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CLIFF EISEN