String Quartet No. 2 (Enescu)

The String Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 22, No. 2, is a chamber music work by the Romanian composer George Enescu, composed mainly between 1950 and 1951, though it has a lengthy pre-history and received a number of revisions in 1952 and possibly early 1953. The score is dedicated to the American pianist, composer, and arts patron, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. A performance of it lasts about 25 minutes. History There are four undated preliminary sketches for the Second String Quartet, made by Enescu starting from about the time of completion of the First Quartet in 1920, or even earlier. The first of these, containing all of the thematic material for a four-movement quartet, may even have been made before the First World War. The second and third drafts are thought to date from the early 1920s, and the fourth probably from some time in the 1930s. In June 1950, in Paris, Enescu began composing his Second Quartet anew, finishing its fifth (and first complete) version on 30 January 1951. Characteristically dissatisfied, he immediately set about a thorough rewriting of the score. Each movement of the manuscript of this sixth version is signed by the composer and precisely dated: the first movement (pp. 1–10) is dated 14 February 1951; the second movement (pp. 10–19) is dated 22 February 1951; the third movement (pp. 20–30) is dated 14 March 1951; the fourth movement (pp. 30–45) is dated "Paris ce 30 mai (1r Xbre) 1951". A further adjustment to the last seven bars of the score was made on 1 October 1951, on an addendum sheet attached to the cello part of the autograph parts now in the George Enescu Museum in Bucharest, with a note in the composer's hand reading "2de version (definitive) des dernières mesures du 2d Quatuor à cordes (sol majeur), Georges Enesco, op. 22 n° 2". This still was not quite the end of the story, however. In 1952 Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., wrote to Enescu in Paris offering a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress for a new chamber music work. Enescu replied on 7 December 1952 that he had no new work in preparation and consequently could not accept the advance proposal from the Koussevitzky Foundation, but he had just finished his Second String Quartet, dedicated to Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He was just about to make final revisions to this score and promised to send it to Washington as soon as it was ready.