Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581, was written in 1789 for the clarinetist Anton Stadler. Though originally written for basset clarinet, it is almost always played on a clarinet in A or B-flat. It was Mozart's only completed clarinet quintet, and is one of the earliest and best-known works written especially for the instrument: it remains to this day one of the most admired of the composer's works. The quintet is sometimes referred to as the Stadler Quintet; Mozart so described it in a letter of April 1790.
