String Quartet No. 2 (Ives)

The String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives is a work for string quartet written between 1907 and 1913.[1] It was premiered at McMillin Theatre, Columbia University in New York City on 11 May 1946, by a Juilliard School student ensemble.[2] Its first professional performance was by the Walden String Quartet, on 15 September 1946, at Yaddo,[2] on a concert which prompted composer Lou Harrison to write: "This work is... the finest piece of American chamber music yet... Music of this kind happens only every fifty years or a century, so rich in faith and so full of the sense of completion."[3] In his Memos, Ives referred to the quartet as "one of the best things I have".[4]

The quartet was first published in 1954 by Peer International, and was reprinted in 1970 with corrections by John Kirkpatrick.[5] In 2016, Peermusic Classical published a critical edition of the quartet, commissioned by the Charles Ives Society and edited by Malcolm Goldstein.[6]

  1. ^ "Charles Ives – String Quartet No. 2 – String Quartets – A Most Intimate Medium". Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  2. ^ a b Sinclair, James B. (1999). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. Yale University Press. p. 171.
  3. ^ Burkholder, J. Peter, ed. (1996). Charles Ives and his World. Princeton University Press. p. 345.
  4. ^ Ives, Charles (1972). Kirkpatrick, John (ed.). Charles E. Ives: Memos. W. W. Norton. p. 73.
  5. ^ Sinclair 1999, p. 170.
  6. ^ Malcolm Goldstein (ed.). "Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 2: Ives Society Critical Edition by". Peermusic Classical. Retrieved 9 November 2020.