Quintet movement in B flat

Mozart cultivated the genre of the string quintet primarily during his later years in Vienna. It appears that Mozart intended his quintets for publication from the outset, although three of them—K. 406, K. 593, and K. 614—were not published until shortly after his death. In addition, a considerable number of string quintet movement fragments have survived. As with other composers from southern Germany and Austria, Mozart’s string quintets—beginning with K. 174, his only contribution to the genre from the Salzburg years—are scored for 2 violins, 2 violas, and cello. Mozart’s Viennese string quintets are uniformly in four movements, with a minuet and trio as the third (or, more rarely, the second) movement. The two quintets that include wind instruments were composed for specific virtuosos. K. 581, with clarinet—the so-called Stadler Quintet—resembles the string quintets in character, whereas the E-flat Quintet, K. 407, written for the horn player Joseph Leitgeb, has only three movements and also exhibits clear characteristics of a concerto.