Ontogenesis (1978) by Richard Festinger
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

When I was a junior high school student taking my first biology course, embryologists believed the maxim "ontogeny recapitulates philogeny" — that the development of an individual organism from embryo to fully developed foetus passed through a series of stages paralleling the evolutionary development of the species. Although this view is no longer considered to be correct, it was a provocative enough idea to attach itself as a title to this quintet.