Different notions of “dialogue” or conversation lie at the heart of the chamber music experience. Composers collaborate with performers to highlight an instrument's or its players’ strengths and avoid weaknesses; players engage in verbal and non-verbal communication throughout the rehearsal and performance of a work; and the works themselves enter into an ongoing dialogue with earlier and contemporaneous pieces. The personal relationships that developed between renowned virtuoso clarinetists and influential composers in the first hundred years of the instrument's history led to the creation of innovative pieces that experiment with new textures and timbres while exploring the clarinet's evolving capabilities, and reflect the unique situations and relationships that brought them into being. This chapter will explore three seminal works for clarinet and string quartet that exemplify the multiple dialogues at play in the creation, performance, and enjoyment of chamber music. An examination of quintets by Mozart (K. 581, 1789), Weber (op. 34, 1811–15), and Brahms (op. 115, 1891) shows how the social settings and broader culture of musical life influenced compositional choices that had a lasting impact on the history of the genre and the instrument. These three works demonstrate the technical development of the clarinet from its early acceptance in the concert hall nearly to its modern state of design, as well as the evolution of chamber music's role in the social life of fashionable Europe during the long nineteenth century, circa 1789–1914. But the main reason why these three works continue to be performed, recorded, and heard throughout the world is that they exemplify the breadth and depth of musical expression that continues to make chamber music so alluring for performers and listeners in a wide variety of set-tings and circumstances.

Mozart and Stadler Create a Genre

Perhaps the most famous collaboration between a clarinetist and composer was that which resulted in the first generally accepted masterworks for the instrument. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) composed several pieces featuring the clarinet and/or the basset horn for virtuoso clarinetists Anton Stadler (1753–1812) and his brother Johann. Mozart seems to have met Stadler in 1781 shortly after his arrival in Vienna. He composed a seven-movement serenade for thirteen instruments, known today as the Gran Partita (K. 361/370a), that contains virtuosic writing for two clarinets and two basset horns.