Traditionally, a clarinet quartet is a chamber musical ensemble made up of one clarinet, plus the standard string trio of one violin, one viola and one cello.
During the second half of eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth centuries, a large number of quartets for clarinet and string trio were written and published, particularly in Paris, as they proved highly popular in Parisian salon concerts, apparently even more so than quintets for clarinet and strings.
[1] Among the earliest examples are the six quartets by Carl Stamitz published as his opus 8 in 1773.
The following is an incomplete list of quartets for clarinet, violin, viola and cello, with their composers in alphabetical order.
Around 1799, arrangements for clarinet quartet of three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's chamber works appeared in publication, possibly by Johann Anton André:[1] the violin sonata in B-flat major, K 378/317d, the violin sonata in E-flat major, K 380/374f, and the piano trio in G major, K 496.