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 Arnold Bax composed his Octet for Horn, Piano and Strings in 1934, scoring it for horn, piano, two violins, two violas, cello, and double bass. The work was written for the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and Bax later sent her a manuscript copy as a gift for her seventieth birthday that October. It runs approximately fifteen minutes in performance and stands as one of the more unusual entries among Bax's chamber works, most of which were written for equally distinctive combinations of instruments.

Musically the Octet belongs to the late Romantic idiom typical of Bax's chamber output, with long, flowing melodic lines, shifting textures, and a harmonic language colored by both French impressionism and an English, often Celtic-inflected sensibility. The horn adds a warm, distinctive color not found in Bax's other chamber pieces for strings and piano, and the writing makes full use of its lyrical and dramatic range against the string sextet and piano. The work remains rarely performed, largely due to the specific combination of players it requires, making a complete set of score and parts a valuable resource for ensembles interested in exploring this corner of Bax's output.