A Guided Tour of Arnold Schoenberg's 2nd String Quartet in F♯ minor, Opus 10 (1908)

This gorgeous composition is a product of 1908, a fateful year in the composer's life. The music reflects the composer's state of mind perfectly, and may perhaps on that basis alone qualify as a specimen of Expressionism. To the four-member ensemble, Schoenberg added a soprano voice, singing poems from Stefan George's "Der siebente Ring," published a year earlier. Schoenberg appears to be taking his leave of quite a lot in this quartet, and I will leave it to you to discover what I mean by that.

This recording is by the Arditti Quartet, with soprano Dawn Upshaw.

You may find it useful to read some commentaries that deal with Schoenberg's personal circumstances at the time of this work's composition. Start here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/...

and here: http://brentanoquartet.com/notes/scho...