Title: Early Development of the Woodwind Ensemble
Headings: 
The Early Development of the Wind Quintet
Content: Modern arrangements of this piece have substituted the horn for the English horn. Because the work is at such an early stage of instrumental writing, the technical  possibilities of each instrument are not exploited. The fast passages are short  and diatonic and the range of each instrument is narrow. The bassoon is used  as an accompanying instrument to the other winds, and the flute carries most of the melody. The  first composer to write for the modern wind quintet was Giovanni Giuseppe Cambini (1746–1825). He wrote three works for the woodwind quintet entitled Quintetti Concertans “which were dedicated  to Jean Xavier Lefevre, a clarinet teacher on the Paris Conservatory staff from 1748 to 1825.” [ 6] Each piece is brief and does not challenge the instrumentalists  to the full extent possible. He treated the quintet much as he would have a string  quartet, and tried to blend all five of the unique sounds together instead of allowing differences in timbre to make the piece  more interesting. Just as in the works of Rosetti, Cambini utilized only the  middle register of each instrument. Cambini did give soloistic lines to each  instrument, including the bassoon, but it was in the form of solo and accompaniment, with the solo being traded between voices.