String Quartet No. 2 in C major, Op. 36

The quartet unfolds in three movements, the last far outweighing the first two combined.

I. Allegro calmo senza rigore: the movement opens with three long, widely spaced notes in the upper strings answered by the cello, a gesture that returns throughout in different guises. The mood stays unhurried even as the music grows more animated, and the movement ends by echoing its spacious opening.

II. Vivace: a fast, tightly muted movement that functions like a scherzo, built from a nervous, scurrying figure that is passed between the instruments. It is brief and unsettled, offering little of the lyricism heard elsewhere.

III. Chacony: Sostenuto: the finale is a chaconne, a set of variations built over a repeating bass pattern, a form Purcell himself favored. Britten states a stark six-bar theme, then works through twenty-one variations grouped into four sections, each introduced by a cadenza for a different instrument, cello, viola, then violin. The variations range from spare, hushed writing to dense, driving climaxes before the theme returns in its original plain form to close the work.

Britten completed the quartet in 1945, timing its premiere to fall on the 250th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell, the 17th century English composer he revered and had championed through editions and arrangements. The Zorian Quartet gave the first performance in London on November 21, 1945. Britten dedicated the work to his teacher Frank Bridge, marking ten years since he had begun studying with him. The finale's use of the chaconne, a form central to Purcell's own instrumental and theatrical music, was Britten's deliberate act of homage. The quartet has since become a staple of the twentieth century string quartet repertoire, valued alongside his first and third quartets as evidence of his command of the form outside his better known vocal and orchestral works.