Malcolm Spence was a good example of that typically English phenomenon, the keen amateur. Encouraged by his parents, he took up the piano and the French horn as a child, but soon developed a passion (and a talent) for composition. By the time he left school, he had already written and performed several original chamber works, and he continued to compose throughout his life.

Amateur and largely self-taught he may have been, but there was nothing ordinary about his technical ability or his creative imagination. The Wind Quintet was written in the 1970s as a project he undertook whilst engaging in the only formal instruction in composition he ever took, at Morley College in London under Melanie Dakin. The wind quintet was an ensemble he particularly enjoyed, but for which the repertoire is a bit limited; there are many light-hearted arrangements, but relatively few “purpose-built” works. So it was an obvious choice for him to give full vent to the new skills he had recently acquired.