Title: Quintet | music | Britannica
Headings: Quintet
Quintet
music
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Content: Other quintet combinations are not uncommon. Boccherini composed 18 quintets for flute or oboe with the normal complement of strings; Mozart’s and Brahms’s quintets for clarinet and string quartet are among their best-known works, as is Mozart’s quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, K 452 (1784). The standard instrumentation of a wind quintet is flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn; a brass quintet has two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba. Both genres have been popular since the 19th century. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
Vocal quintets are usually written for two sopranos, alto, tenor, and bass. Much other literature for five voice parts exists—16th-century madrigals, for example—but the name quintet is usually not applied to it. Vocal quintets also occur in opera;