The String Quartet No. 2 by

Ernest Bloch Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing music ...

was composed between 1940 and 1945. The quartet averages 34 minutes to perform. Bloch wrote it following a close study of Beethoven's sketches for the ''

Eroica Eroica may refer to: Music * Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven) (''Sinfonia Eroica,'' 1801), by Ludwig van Beethoven * The ''Eroica Variations'' (Variations and Fugue for Piano in E♭ major, Opus 35, 1802), by Ludwig van Beethoven * '' Transcendental Ét ...

'' symphony.Bloch, String Quartets. Pristine Audio CD PACM120 (2023)
reviewed at ''MusicWeb International'' After its premiere, Ernest Newman called the String Quartet No. 2 "the finest work of our time in this genre, one that is worthy to stand beside the last quartets of Beethoven". The composer himself called it "dry, not easy to listen to … and I doubt it will be liked". Today it is typically regarded as the finest of Bloch's five quartets. Only in the second quartet did Bloch find a synthesis between formal sonata form structure and his "fundamentally improvisational and rhapsodic" thought, avoiding the weaknesses of cyclic procedures often evident in other works.Frederick Rimmer
'Ernest Bloch's Second String Quartet'
in ''Tempo'', No. 52 (Autumn 1959), pp. 11-16 and 19

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