chamber music

A chamber music work is a musical composition intended for a small ensemble of strings, woodwinds, brass, or percussion, which traditionally, and before the rise of public concerts, could fit into the “grand chamber” of a palace. Each part is written for a single instrumentalist, with no original conductor or designated soloist. If some parts are doubled or tripled, particularly in the strings, it is referred to as a chamber orchestra; beyond that, it is called an orchestra, with a qualifier for its instrumental composition (symphonic, string, wind, brass band).

The conception of these ensembles — duos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, septets, octets, nonets, and decets — requires composers to have knowledge of harmony, polyphony, counterpoint, and organology. In classical music, the composition of string quartets is most often considered one of the pinnacles of musical writing.

These ensembles of a few soloists, each leading their voice independently of the others, most often have the highest-pitched instrument as their “leader” (the first violin in a string quartet, the flutist in a wind quintet), but some more complex works or those with a larger ensemble require the presence (always optional, but often essential) of a conductor (Mozart's Gran Partita for 13 wind instruments in B-flat major, Dvořák's Serenade in D minor, Op. 44 for winds, cello, and double bass).

In principle, the term excludes pieces with a vocal part, despite the intimate character often found in mélodies and Lieder. Some 20th and 21st-century composers, however, introduce the voice into chamber music ensembles, such as Schönberg in his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 (1908), Ottorino Respighi in Il tramonto (1914), Olivier Greif in his Quatuor à cordes no 3 avec voix (1998), and Elena Ruehr in her second quartet “Song of the Silkie” (2000). In some recent works, the composer chooses to add a part of fixed sounds (magnetic tape or CD, for example) to acoustic instruments, or even to amplify them using microphones, or even to transform their sound using a computer.