Quintet after the wind octet op. 103 for 2 violins, 2 violas and violoncello (E-flat major) op. 4
Composition
1795
Beethoven sketched this quintet in 1795, as we know from paper analysis. He handed the engraver's copy to his publisher Artaria before embarking on his concert tour to Prague and Berlin in January 1796. To produce the quintet he turned to his Wind Octet op. 103, composed as dinner music for the Archbishop of Bonn in 1792. Scholars have long debated whether the quintet is an arrangement or a new version of that work. True, Beethoven made use of the original octet, but he changed its structure and instrumentation so radically that the quintet is really a new composition based on earlier material.
Ferdinand Ries relates an anecdote about the quintet's origin. At one of the regular Friday morning concerts at Prince Lichnowsky's, Count Appony commissioned Beethoven to write a string quartet, 'which he had not done up to then'. Beethoven went to work twice: 'on the first attempt he wrote a great violin trio [op. 3], and on the second, a violin quintet [op. 4]." (J.R.)
Ferdinand Ries relates an anecdote about the quintet's origin. At one of the regular Friday morning concerts at Prince Lichnowsky's, Count Appony commissioned Beethoven to write a string quartet, 'which he had not done up to then'. Beethoven went to work twice: 'on the first attempt he wrote a great violin trio [op. 3], and on the second, a violin quintet [op. 4]." (J.R.)
