Alexander Zemlinsky's music has long unfairly remained in the shadow of the Second Vienna School, considered "more progressive". Admittedly, Zemlinsky was friendly very close to one of the most prominent personalities of this school, Arnold Schönberg, but he never crossed the step of the dodecaphonic radicalism. However, he did not compose less original or less personal works. And it is precisely his second String Quartet, developed in the years 1913-1915, which carried the form and the tonality, as we then imagined them, to their last limits. The work, in one movement, but comprising more than 1200 bars, is of great diversity, and is one of the most striking contributions of its time; it had long needed a new critical edition. The Henle Urtext edition corrects a large number of faults and inaccuracies in the original edition, which appeared in the careful comparison made with the autograph handwritten sources from Vienna and Washington. Even the metronomic indications transmitted by Zemlinsky in a single letter correspondence were for the first time taken into account. This editorial work was kindly supported by the Alexander Zemlinsky Fund in Vienna.
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