Piano quintet Piano quintet In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments. The genre particularly flourished in the nineteenth century. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the instrumentation most frequently consisted of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Following the phenomenal success of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E major, Op. 44 in 1842, which paired the piano with a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello), composers began to adopt Schumann's instrumentation. Among the most frequently performed piano quintets, aside from Schumann's, are those by Franz Schubert,
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