String Quartet No. 2

String Quartet No. 2, string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a cello) by American composer Elliott Carter, in which each instrument is treated as a unique personality engaged in an ongoing exchange of musical ideas—and fragments of ideas—with the other members of the ensemble. The work was completed in 1959, and it premiered in 1960. That same year it won the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Though his catalog comprises roughly 100 works in virtually all genres, Carter was particularly prolific in chamber music. In that genre he left one of his greatest marks with String Quartet No. 2, a piece that consists of six short movements, played in unbroken succession: “Introduction,” “Allegro fantastico,” “Presto scherzando,” “Andante espressivo,” “Allegro,” and “Conclusion.” The second, third, and fourth movements have cadenzas (virtuosic solo closing passages) for viola, cello, and violin, respectively.

Carter’s approach was unlike that of such Classical composers as Beethoven or Brahms, who typically unified a piece by allowing its central melodies to reappear—often in a varied form but recognizably from the same root. Instead, Carter focused on fragments of melodies and what could be built from them. Of his String Quartet No. 2, he said,

There is little dependence on thematic recurrence, which is replaced by an ever-changing series of motives and figures having certain internal relationships with each other.

Moreover, rather than working within a framework of melody supported by harmony, he kept the four instruments “quite distinct,” imagining a “four-way conversation” in which there was perhaps more talking than there was listening. Further, there was dissonance; the layers were meant to contrast with one another, not to blend.