Octet for Wind Instruments

The Octet for wind instruments is a chamber music composition by Igor Stravinsky, completed in 1923. Stravinsky’s Octet is scored for an unusual combination of woodwind and brass instruments: flute, clarinet in B♭ and A, two bassoons, trumpet in C, trumpet in A, tenor trombone, and bass trombone. Because of its dry wind sonorities, divertimento character, and open and self-conscious adoption of "classical" forms of the German tradition (sonata, variation, fugue), as well as the fact that the composer published an article asserting his formalist ideas about it shortly after the Octet's first performance, it has been generally regarded as the beginning of neoclassicism in Stravinsky's music, even though his opera Mavra (1921–22) already displayed most of the traits associated with this phase of his career (Walsh 2001, §5).