Mozart’s famous and much-played Piano Quartet in G minor, K.478, was composed in 1785 in Vienna. As Georg Nikolaus v. Nissen states, a contract with the Viennese publisher F. A. Hoffmeister who had commissioned three piano quartets from Mozart, was the apparent occasion for the composition.
The quartets owe their existence to chance and Mozart was scarcely aware of the fact that with these works, in what was then still a new form which was to be of great importance in the future, he had established a secure position in chamber music.