Nonet (music)

In music, a nonet is a chamber music composition which requires nine musicians for a performance. The standard nonet scoring is for wind quintet, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, though other combinations are also found. Additionally, the term may apply to a group of nine musicians regardless of whether they are playing chamber music. The first work to actually bear the title of nonet was Louis Spohr's Grand Nonetto in F major, Op. 31 (1813), for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Earlier compositions, however, had been composed for nine instruments (Joseph Haydn's four Divertimenti (or Cassations), for 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 violins, 2 violas, and double bass, Hob. II:9, 17 [2 clarinets instead of oboes], 20, and G1, Ignaz Pleyel's Nocturne of 1785, for 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 violas, double bass, and 2 hurdy-gurdies, and Franz Schubert's Eine kleine Trauermusik of 1813 (D 79), for two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, two horns, and two trombones). Louis Spohr's nonet was so successful that its instrumentation became the standard for subsequent emulation down to the present time. The many composers who wrote for this combination include Louise Farrenc (Op. 38, 1849), Georges Onslow (Op. 77, 1851), Franz Lachner (Nonet in F major 1875), Josef Rheinberger (Op. 139, 1884), and Tilo Medek (Nonet in Nine Movements, 1974). Other works, though not actually titled "nonet", followed the same pattern, such as René Leibowitz's Chamber Concerto (Op. 10, 1944). In the 20th century this standard instrumentation was embodied especially by the Czech Nonet, for whom works were composed by Josef Bohuslav Foerster (Op. 147, 1931) and Alois Hába, whose first two nonets are titled Fantazie, opp. 40 and 41 (1931 and 1932), followed by Nonet No. 3, Op. 82, and Nonet No. 4, Op. 97. Bohuslav Martinů dedicated his 1959 Nonet to the Czech Nonet on the occasion of its 35th anniversary. One late-19th-century, slightly non-standard example is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's 1894 Nonet in F minor, for an ensemble in which a piano replaced the flute.