A great friend to the Mozart family, the hornist Joseph Leutgeb was apparently a phenomenal musician, as Mozart composed the Horn Quintet and the four horn concerti for Leutgeb. The two had known each other in Salzburg and moved to Vienna around the same time in the early 1780s where Leutgeb opened a cheese shop to supplement his income as a musician.
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| A VALVELESS NATURAL HORN USED IN THE 18TH CENTURY |
Interestingly, Mozart's Horn Quintet does not use the standard instrumentation of the string quartet. Rather, to compliment the mellow middle range timbre of the horn, Mozart replaced the second violin part with a second viola part. The result is a work filled with warm amiable music that highlights the horn throughout.
