Clarinet Quintet (Mozart)

Musical composition by Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, was written in 1789 for the clarinetist Anton Stadler. A clarinet quintet is a work for one clarinet and a string quartet. Although originally written for basset clarinet, in contemporary performances it usually is played on a clarinet in A. It is Mozart's only completed clarinet quintet and is one of the earliest and best known works, written especially for the instrument. It remains to this day one of the most admired of the composer's works. Sometimes the quintet is referred to as the Stadler Quintet; Mozart so described it in a letter of April 1790. Mozart also wrote a trio for clarinet, viola, and piano for Stadler, the so called Kegelstatt Trio, in 1786. Stadler was a friend to Mozart who was very talented in the instrument.

The composer indicated that the work was finished on 29 September 1789. It received its premiere on 22 December of the same year, in one of the four annual Vienna performances of the Tonkünstler Societät, an organization that existed to fund pensions for widows and orphans of musicians. The main item on the program was a cantata, Il natale d'Apollo, by Vincenzo Righini; Mozart's work was performed between the two halves of this work. The solo clarinet part was taken by Stadler, the first violin part by Joseph Zistler (1744–1794).

The work consists of the following four movements A major, time = , 197 bars, where bars 1 to 79 and bars 80 to 197 are repeated. with exposition, development, and recapitulation. |2=Larghetto, D major, time = , 85 bars There are five variations. It is possible that Mozart completed the movement, as the score continues into the development section on the last surviving page.) Nevertheless, the quintet K. 581 in A major is Mozart's sole surviving complete work for clarinet quintet.

The fragment in A, Anhang 88, for basset clarinet in A and string quartet may originally have been intended as the fourth movement of KV 581. The sparsely notated fragment of 111 bars shares the opening theme of Ferrando's aria, no. 24, from Così fan tutte. Several musicians have made completions including Otto Bach (1870), Robert Levin, and Craig Hill (2022).

In "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", the final episode of the American television series M*A*S*H, Charles Winchester learns that five Chinese soldiers who surrendered to him are musicians, one of whom plays a theme from the Clarinet Quintet, and Winchester proceeds to teach them the entire piece.