Piano quintet

In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly (since 1842) a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello). The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a piano quintet. The genre flourished during the nineteenth century.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, most piano quintets were scored for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Following the success of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E♭ major, Op. 44 in 1842, which paired the piano with a string quartet, composers increasingly adopted Schumann's instrumentation, and it was this form of the piano quintet that dominated during the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century.

Among the best known and most frequently performed piano quintets, aside from Schumann's, are Schubert's Trout quintet and the piano quintets of Johannes Brahms, César Franck, Antonín Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich.^[1]

The piano quintet before 1842

While the related chamber music genres of the piano trio and piano quartet were established in the eighteenth century by Mozart and others, the piano quintet did not come into its own until the nineteenth century.^[2] Its roots extend into the late Classical period, when piano concertos were sometimes transcribed for piano with string quartet accompaniment.^[3]

Although Luigi Boccherini composed quintets for piano and string quartet, before 1842 it was more common for the piano to be joined by violin, viola, cello and double bass. Among the best known quintets for this combination of instruments are Franz Schubert's "Trout" Quintet in A major (1819) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Piano Quintet in E-flat minor, Op.87 (1802). Other piano quintets using this instrumentation were composed by Jan Ladislav Dussek (1799), Ferdinand Ries (1817), Johann Baptist Cramer (1825, 1832), Henri Jean Rigel (1826), Johann Peter Pixis (ca.1827), Franz Limmer (1832), Louise Farrenc (1839, 1840), and George Onslow (1846, 1848, 1849).^[4][5]

Mozart (in 1784) and Ludwig van Beethoven (in 1796) each composed a quintet for piano and winds, scored for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, that are sometimes referred to as piano quintets.

Schumann and the Romantic piano quintet

In the middle of the 19th century, Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E♭ major, Op. 44 (1842), composed for piano with string quartet, helped establish that combination of instruments as the typical model for the piano quintet. Schumann's choice of scoring reflected developments in musical performance and instrumental design.

By midcentury, the string quartet was regarded as the most prestigious and important chamber music genre, while advances in the design of the piano had expanded its power and dynamic range. Bringing the piano and string quartet together, Schumann's piano quintet took full advantage of the expressive possibilities of these forces in combination, alternating conversational passages between the five instruments with passages in which the combined forces of the strings are massed against the piano. In Schumann's hands, the piano quintet became a genre "suspended between private and public spheres" alternating between "quasi-symphonic and more properly chamber-like elements"—well suited to an era when chamber music was increasingly being performed in large concert halls rather than at private gatherings in intimate spaces.^[6]

Schumann's quintet helped establish the piano quintet as a significant chamber music genre during the Romantic period in classical music.^[7] It was immediately acclaimed and widely imitated.^[1][8] Johannes Brahms, for example, was persuaded by Clara Schumann (who had played the piano part in the first public performance of her husband's piano quintet) to rework a sonata for two pianos as a piano quintet. The result, the Piano Quintet in F minor (1864), is one of the most frequently performed works of the genre.^[9]

Subsequent compositions such as César Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor (1879) and Antonín Dvořák's Piano Quintet #2 in A major, Op. 81 (1887) further solidified the genre as a "vehicle for Romantic expression."^[1]

20th century

In the twentieth century, the piano quintet repertoire was expanded with contributions by composers such as Béla Bartók, Sergei Taneyev, Louis Vierne, Edward Elgar, Amy Beach, Gabriel Fauré, and Dmitri Shostakovich. However, unlike the string quartet, which remained an important chamber music genre for musical experimentation, the piano quintet came to acquire "a somewhat conservative profile, far from major developments" in musical expression.^[10]

List of compositions for piano quintet

The following is a partial list of compositions for piano quintet. All works are scored for piano and string quartet unless otherwise noted.

Before 1800

19th century

1900 and after

A

B

C–E

F–G

H–K

L–M

N–Q

R

S

T–Z

See also

• Quintet

References

Further reading

• Basil Smallman (1994). The Piano Quartet and Quintet: Style Structure, and Scoring, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816640-0.

External links

• Public domain piano quintet scores from IMSLP