Wind Quintet (Schoenberg)

[2] The Quintet is in four movements: The work is laid out in the four-movement pattern of Classical chamber-music forms, using the thematic contrast usual in them.

[3] In this way, Schoenberg sought to restore the innate expressive qualities of the forms of tonal music, and so the Quintet, along with the Suite for piano, Op.

[4] The first movement follows standard sonata-allegro layout, and "is perhaps the most notorious example of a twelve-tone movement imitating a tonal form", with a repeated two-theme exposition, a development section, and a recapitulation in which the second theme is transposed up a perfect fourth, as if it were a tonal work with the second key area originally in the dominant.

[5] The mistaken impression is easily formed that this is "some sort of musical taxidermy—rondo and sonata-allegro skins stuffed and mounted with chromatic sawdust" but, despite superficial appearances, the structure is quite a different thing.

Unlike some other passages in the Quintet, the accompaniment here uses the same tones as are found in the melody but not at the same time.