Peter Grimes was largely written during 1944 and premiered with great success by the Sadler’s Wells Company in London on June 7, 1945. Germany had surrendered exactly one month before, and the ghastly human toll of the concentration camps was just then coming to be realized. Soon after Grimes had been launched, Britten went on a short tour as accompanist for violinist Yehudi Menuhin at concerts in Belsen and other of the camps, and the works he undertook when he returned to England—The Holy Sonnets of John Donne and the Second String Quartet—bear a seriousness of expression undoubtedly touched by the conditions the composer had witnessed. The Quartet, however, was not intended primarily as a musical tract on the tragic aftermath of war, but rather as a tribute to Henry Purcell, the revered English composer whose 250th death anniversary was being observed throughout the country in 1945. The Quartet was completed on October 14th and first played by the Zorian String Quartet on November 21st, the exact date of Purcell’s death, at a commemorative concert in Wigmore Hall, London. The following day, Britten’s birthday (and, fortuitously, the feast day of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music), the composer and tenor Peter Pears premiered the Donne Sonnets, which were heavily influenced in their structure and word setting by the music of Purcell.

The opening Allegro of the Second Quartet is a modern sonata form that achieves unity and structural cohesion from multiple thematic units through the traditional tripartite progression of presentation–elaboration–return. The three principal subjects, each beginning with a soaring leap of a tenth (an octave plus a third), are announced in quick succession in (almost) unison. The first continues with a stepwise motive; the second with a broken chord pattern and a falling interval; and the third with further wide, leaping intervals. The themes are played again, though with considerable elaboration (a vestige of the old Classical exposition repeat): the first to a hammering accompaniment of nervously bounding notes; the second as a lyrical violin strain; the third as a broadly sustained episode in long notes. A brief recall of the bounding notes and some tentative pizzicato notes mark the onset of the formal development section, which atomizes the themes with masterful ingenuity and skill. The function of the recapitulation is served by the simultaneous return of all three motives above a wide-ranging, short-note ostinato figure in the cello. The quiet coda, entered by way of the bounding notes and the tentative pizzicato tones, dissipates much of the movement’s tension.

Michael Kennedy wrote of the Vivace, “It is often described as ‘eerie,’ but this is not precisely the mood. Panic-stricken is nearer.” This haunted movement follows the traditional three-part form—scherzo–trio–scherzo—though without clear formal demarcations. The outer sections are built on a hurtling, short-breathed theme (and its crossed-string background) into which are injected rudely jabbing points of sound. The central trio is characterized by a lessening of intensity and repeated attempts at lyricism by the first violin that are broken off by the insistent rhythms of the other instruments. The scherzo returns in the highest reaches of the violins and viola.

The powerful finale is a Chacony, a form of ground bass variations greatly favored by Purcell. The austere nine-measure theme is announced in unison, and then becomes the subject of 21 variations in four sections divided by solo cadenzas (cello, viola, first violin). The first three groups each contain six variations, leaving three for the coda. “The sections,” according to the composer, “may be said to review the theme from (a) harmonic, (b) rhythmic, (c) melodic and (d) formal aspects.” The Quartet is brought around full circle when the last variation is deftly made to incorporate the leaping motive that began the work.

The creation of the Quartet in F major, Beethoven’s last complete work (his only subsequent music was a new finale for the Op. 130 Quartet to replace the Grosse Fuge), wrapped around the painful events of his final months. The earliest sketches date from April 1826, though it was to be three months before he undertook serious work on the score. The Op. 135 Quartet stands in its sunny demeanor and compact scale as a kind of optimistic pendant to the visionary profundities of the other late quartets. The qualities of relaxation and good cheer are exhibited by the opening movement. The half-dozen motives comprising the main theme are discussed in a conversational manner before the music passes onto its formal second subject, initiated by a rocket phrase shot into the violin’s highest reaches. The tiny development section leads to the expressive and formal security of the recapitulation.

If the first movement borrows its demeanor from the late 18th century, the scintillating Vivace, with its syncopations, cross accents and harmonic abruptness, is decidedly a product of Beethoven’s final creative period; the central trio posits a melody that tries to fly completely beyond the limits of the violin. The Lento, music of sublime introspection and rapturous stillness, rarely rises above a stage whisper. Over the opening theme, which serves as the subject for a series of free variations, Beethoven wrote, “Süsser Ruhegesang, Friedengesang”—“Sweet restful song [or lullaby], song of peace.” It is not impossible that this phrase had autobiographical import for the composer, then 56 years old and seriously ill. The cryptic legend heading the finale—Der schwer gefasste Entschluss. Muss es sein? Es muss sein! (“The difficult resolution. Must it be? It must be!”)—apparently arose from the playful canon Beethoven wrote for a friend in April, but six months later, when the motives derived from its syllables gave rise to the principal theme of this movement, it may have taken on a more philosophical implication for the composer—the quintessential question of the acceptance of his own mortality. (The manuscript is inscribed in French in the composer’s hand, “Dernier [last] quatuor de Beethoven.”) The slow introduction, the only tragic passage in the entire work, is hewn from the falling shape of the motive “Muss es sein?” but the main body of the sonata-form movement forges its joyous resolve from the rising reply: Es muss sein! Once, to join the development to the recapitulation, the tragic music returns, but its melancholic emotions are soon dispelled by the Quartet’s jubilant close.