Arnold Schönberg - String Quartet No. 2

- Composer: Arnold Schönberg {Schoenberg after 1934} (13 September 1874 -- 13 July 1951) - Performers: New Vienna String Quartet, Evelyn Lear (Soprano) - Year of recording: 1967 String Quartet No. 2 for Soprano & String Quartet in F sharp minor, Op. 10, written in 1908. 00:00 - I. Mäßig (Moderate), F sharp minor 07:09 - II. Sehr rasch (Very brisk), D minor 14:18 - III. “Litanei“, langsam (“Litany“, slow), E flat minor 19:50 - IV. “Entrückung“, sehr langsam (“Rapture“, very slow), No key This work in four movements was written during a very emotional time in Schoenberg’s life. Though it bears the dedication “to my wife“, it was written during Mathilde Schoenberg’s affair with their friend and neighbour, artist Richard Gerstl, in 1908. Previous dedicatees are guessed at to have been either Arnold Rosé, the founder of the Rosé Quartet (who performed Schoenberg’s string quartets) or Gustav Mahler, a good friend of Schoenberg. The third and fourth movements are quite unusual for a string quartet, as they also include a soprano singer, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, using poetry written by Stefan George from the collection “Der siebente Ring“ (The Seventh Ring), which was published in 1907. “I was inspired by poems of Stefan George, the German poet, to compose music to some of his poems and, surprisingly, without any expectation on my part, these songs showed a style quite different from everything I had written before.“ - Arnold Schoenberg (1937) The first three movements are tonal, though as in his First String Quartet this is the very extended tonality of the late Romantic period. The first movement is in a compressed sonata form. The second movement, the scherzo, quotes a Viennese street-song, ’Oh du lieber Augustin’ (Oh, dear Augustin). The fourth movement has no key signature, and may be considered Arnold Schoenberg’s first experiment in atonality, making use of the entire chromatic gamut, though its adventurous harmony comes to a close on a haunting F sharp major chord. Its first performance was given by the Rosé Quartet and Marie Gutheil-Schoder in Vienna on 21 December 1908. The work was later revised in 1921; Schoenberg also made a version for full string orchestra.