String Quartet No. 2 in F‑Sharp Minor

Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, composed in 1908, has a historic place in classical music: This was the first work where long stretches of the music were no longer anchored in traditional tonality, inhabiting instead a new world of atonality or total chromaticism. Very unusually, the four string-quartet instruments—two violins, viola and cello—are joined in the last two movements by a solo soprano voice, singing settings of “Litanei” (Litany) and “Entrückung” (Rapture) by the German symbolist poet Stefan George (1868-1933). Although richly chromatic, the first two movements remain tied to their respective keys of F-sharp minor and D minor, and the “Litanei” setting is structured as a theme and variations in E-flat minor. But the flickering passagework of the finale’s opening is in no definable tonality; the music instead evokes the opening words of George’s poem, “Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten” (“I feel air from another planet”) and continues to explore these free-floating harmonic regions before eventually closing in F-sharp major.