String Quintet (Schubert) Its first known public performance occurred only three years earlier, on 17 November 1850 at the Musikverein in Vienna. The work is the only full-fledged string quintet in Schubert's oeuvre. When he began composing his string quintet, Schubert had already composed an impressive body of chamber music for strings, including at least fifteen string quartets, most of which were composed for domestic performance by his family's string quartet. Schubert selected the key of C major in a possible gesture to two composers he greatly admired, Mozart and Beethoven, both of whom wrote string quintets in that key, Mozart's String Quintet
String Quintet (Schubert) viola with a second cello; however, Schubert's use of the second cello is very different from Boccherini's, who uses the additional cello to create an additional viola line. Alfred Einstein has proposed that Schubert's use of a second cello to enhance the lower strings may have been suggested by George Onslow, who used a double bass in some of his quintets. The string quintet consists of four movements in the usual quick-slow-scherzo-quick pattern: In common with other late Schubert works (notably, the symphony in C major, D. 944, the piano sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, and the string quartet