Oboe quartet

An Oboe quartet is a composition scored for oboe, violin, viola and basso. While the genre is not very common, Mozart wrote the most well known, his Oboe Quartet, K. 370. Other composers of oboe quartets include Johann Christian Bach, Josef Fiala, Franz Krommer and Colin Matthews. The oboe quartet form is often less preferable to composers than the standard string quartet, as indicated by the few compositions for this ensemble.

F major

The F major scale (or the key of F) consists of the pitches F, G, A, B♭, C, D, and E. Its key signature has one flat.

Its relative minor is D minor and its parallel minor is F minor.

F major key is the home key of the English horn, the basset horn, the horn in F, the trumpet in F and the bass Wagner tuba. Thus, music in F major for these instruments is written in C major key. Most of these sound a perfect fifth lower than written, with the exception of the trumpet in F which sounds a fourth higher. (The basset horn also often sounds an octave and a fifth lower.)

Notable compositions in F major

Oboe Quartet (Mozart)

The Oboe Quartet in F major, K. 370/368b, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in early 1781. The quartet is scored for oboe, violin, viola and cello. In 1780, Mozart was invited to Munich to visit Elector Karl Theodor, who had commissioned the opera Idomeneo for a carnival celebration. While in Munich, Mozart renewed an acquaintance with Friedrich Ramm, a virtuoso oboist in the Munich orchestra. It was for Ramm that Mozart composed the quartet in order to show off his virtuosity and the improvements that had been made to the oboe at that time. One way that this piece showed off the instrument was the use of the "high F" above the staff, a note rarely played in any repertoire previously written for the oboe.

This piece is a work of chamber music, but it has elements that harken to other musical genres, and requires a fair amount of virtuosity. Because of its large amount of virtuosic playing on the part of the oboe and the large degree to which the strings simply accompany the oboist, it almost resembles a concerto, but with only with four players instead of an entire orchestra. Despite this, there are also a number of places within the work that require ensemble playing, for example, the famous 13-bar passage in the finale in which the oboe plays in common time against a 6/8 accompaniment.

Quartet

In music, a quartet or quartette (French: quatuor, German: Quartett, Italian: quartetto, Spanish: cuarteto, Polish: kwartet) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices or instruments.

Classical

String quartet

In Classical music, the most important combination of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quartets most often consist of two violins, a viola, and a cello. The particular choice and number of instruments derives from the registers of the human voice: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. In the string quartet, two violins play the soprano and alto vocal registers, the viola plays the tenor register and the cello plays the bass register.

Composers of notable string quartets include Joseph Haydn (68 compositions), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (23), Ludwig van Beethoven (17), Felix Mendelssohn (6), Franz Schubert (15), Johannes Brahms (3), Antonín Dvořák (14), Alexander Borodin (2), Béla Bartók (6), and Dmitri Shostakovich (15). The Italian composer Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805), wrote more than 100 string quartets.

Oboe

Oboes /ˈoʊboʊ/ OH-boh are a family of double reed woodwind musical instruments. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. Oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials. A soprano oboe measures roughly 65 cm (25 ¹⁄₂ in) long, with metal keys, a conical bore and a flared bell. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed and vibrating a column of air. The distinctive oboe tone is versatile, and has been described as "bright". When the term oboe is used alone, it is generally taken to mean the standard treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family, such as the cor anglais (English horn) or the oboe d'amore.

In English, prior to 1770, the standard instrument was called a "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy" (pronounced /ˈhoʊbɔɪ/ HOH-boy, borrowed from the French name, a compound word made of haut ["high", "loud"] and bois ["wood", "woodwind"]). The spelling of oboe was adopted into English c. 1770 from the Italian oboè, a transliteration in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French name. A musician who plays the oboe is called an "oboist" or simply an "Oboe Player."