String Quartet No. 2 (Bartók)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (January 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The String Quartet No. 2 by Béla Bartók was written between 1915, and October 1917 in Rákoskeresztúr in Hungary.

The work is in three movements:

Moderato
Allegro molto capriccioso
Lento

In a letter to André Gertier, Bartók described the first movement as being in sonata form, the second as "a kind of rondo" and the third as "difficult to define" but possibly a sort of ternary form.

The work is influenced by Debussy. It was dedicated to the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, and it was they who gave the piece its premiere on 3 March 1918 in Budapest. The work was first published in 1920 by Universal Edition.

[edit] External links

String Quartet No. 2 was available at the International Music Score Library Project.
'Bartók Quartet No. 2', lecture by Roger Parker, followed by a performance by the Badke Quartet, Gresham College, 4th December 2007 (available for for download as MP3 or MP4, as well as a text document)

v • d • e String Quartets by Béla Bartók
String Quartet No. 1 (1909) · String Quartet No. 2 (1915-17) · String Quartet No. 3 (1927) · String Quartet No. 4 (1928) · String Quartet No. 5 (1934) · String Quartet No. 6 (1939) List of compositions by Béla Bartók