The Wind Quintet Is Born

Paris in the 1780s, when five different winds were written as equals

Related

ClassicalChamber MusicClarinetBassoon

In Paris in the 1780s, five wind instruments with very different ways of speaking were written into the same work. The wind quintet was not one master's manifesto but a scoring worked out by publishers, amateur players and composers together.

Time and place

Paris, in the 1780s. The Italian composer Giuseppe Cambini published several sets of wind quintets there, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Thirty years later Anton Reicha wrote twenty-four more in Paris and Vienna and fixed the scoring and the style.

What happened

Before this, wind ensembles mostly played Harmoniemusik for outdoor or ceremonial use, usually in paired two-part scoring, with the music serving the occasion. Cambini wrote the five colours as a conversation: flute and oboe take turns leading, clarinet fills the middle, horn anchors the harmony, bassoon supplies bass and rhythm. The difficulty is balance, since the instruments differ in volume and attack, so the composer must redistribute roles and place the weaker instruments where they can be heard. Most players were court or theatre musicians, and the quintet gave them music for their own evenings.

What changed

The wind quintet became an independent chamber genre rather than a vehicle for operatic arrangements. Wind players gained repertory that did not depend on strings, and listeners learned to hear five colours making room for each other. Later writing for the medium, from Reicha to the twentieth-century French school, treats this scoring as the default.

Listen for the turn

Begin with the opening of Cambini's Quintet No. 1 in B flat, flute and oboe alternating while the horn supports the cadence. Then the Quintet No. 2 in D minor, where the minor key thickens the clarinet's middle voice. Finally Beethoven's early Wind Quintet Hess 19, the same group keeping clarity under heavier harmony. All are ensemble recordings; notice who leads and who yields.

Related

This turn belongs to Classical; the scoring is part of Chamber Music, with colour from the Clarinet and Bassoon.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Wind quintet" — Cambini and Reicha dates checked, not quoted
• Ludwig Finscher, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd ed., article "Blaserquintett" — Paris publication context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.