The work was premiered by the
Marsick Quartet, with
Camille Saint-Saëns playing the piano part, which Franck had written out for him with an appended note: "To my good friend Camille Saint-Saëns". A minor scandal ensued when at the piece's completion, Saint-Saëns walked off stage leaving the score open at the piano, a gesture which was interpreted as mark of disdain. That manuscript is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France The published form issued by Hamelle in 1880, carries the simpler dedication "À Camille Saint-Saëns".
The work has been described as having a "torrid emotional power", and
Édouard Lalo characterized it as an "explosion". Other critics have been less positively impressed: Philosopher Roger Scruton has written of the quintet's "unctuous narcissism".
The music has a cyclical character whereby a motto theme of two four-bar phrases, used 18 times in the first movement, recurs at strategic point later in the work.