Schoenberg fully knew the difficulties of his Quintet for Winds, Op. 26. In his sketches, he entitled the work: "Quintet for flute, oboe, intelligent clarinet, intelligent horn, bassoon." It appears more often in the classroom than in the concert hall. Nearly every measure requires maximum effort from all five players, who are charged with transmitting a tremendous wealth of ideas to the audience. Few of Schoenberg's pieces expose "how it is done" as clearly as the quintet.

The earliest sketches for Schoenberg's Wind Quintet Op. 26 date from April 14, 1923. Composition of the first movement began in earnest on April 21; the completion of the finale occurred on July 26. Only the second work Schoenberg composed using his twelve-note method, the quintet was first performed at the Viennese Festival of Music and Drama, which ran from September 14 to October 15, 1924, partly in honor of Schoenberg's birthday of September 13. The work is dedicated to Schoenberg's grandson, "Bubi Arnold."

The quintet is the first large-scale, multi-movement work Schoenberg had composed in 15 years. The first movement of the Quintet for Winds, Op. 26, a model of economy, follows the sonata format, and its introduction would resurface in Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra. The finale, a rondo, exhibits some of the light energy generally associated with Classical-era movements in rondo form.

Schoenberg's melding of innovation and tradition is most apparent in the third movement, marked Etwas langsam. The movement is cast in ternary form with the first and last section built upon the same rows and combinations of rows, creating a return not only in terms of melodic material but of harmonic content in classic recapitulatory fashion. The primary row itself bears a few links with "tradition." For instance, the two hexachords (six note groups dividing the row in half) each have the same shape and have the same intervals between all of the notes except the last. Furthermore, the first note of the second hexachord is a fifth above the first note of the first hexachord, implying a tonic-dominant relationship. The outer and inner sections of the movement are delineated in large part by their prevalent permutations of the row, and overall unity is achieved by the continuous use of particular tetrachords in either vertical or horizontal form. The movement is a perfect example of how Schoenberg felt the twelve-note method should be applied, vertically and horizontally. It is clear that the Quintet for Winds, Op. 26, is not a step toward a new development; rather, it embodies a totally new idiom in the history of Western music.

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