QUINTET

musical composition for five instruments or voices; also the group of musicians engaged in the performance of such a composition. The string quintet normally includes two violins, two violas, and a cello. Mozart's six works for this medium are usually considered his greatest achievement in chamber music. The composer and virtuoso cellist Luigi Boccherini favoured two cellos in place of two violas and composed 113 quintets for this combination as well as a dozen for the more conventional instrumentation. Only Franz Schubert followed his example, in the well-known Quintet in C. The piano quintetusually piano and string quartethas been a popular medium with composers, with Boccherini having written a dozen of them, though Schubert's notable Trout Quintet is for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Flute, oboe, clarinet, etc., are also combined with four strings. Boccherini composed 18 quintets for flute or oboe and the normal complement of strings. Vocal quintets are usually for two sopranos, alto, tenor, and bass; much literature for five parts exists16th-century madrigals, for examplebut the name quintet is rarely used for it.