String Quartet No. 2 (Feldman)
String Quartet No. 2 is a single-movement work for the string quartet written by American composer Morton Feldman in 1983.
The composition is notable for its extreme duration, lasting between four and six hours depending on how the 124-page score is played. The piece's score is written such that one page of the score may represent as much as seven minutes of music or as little as thirty seconds. It is Feldman's longest work. The piece is performed without breaks.
Background
String Quartet No. 2 was commissioned in 1983 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and premiered on December 4th of that year by the Kronos Quartet in an abridged 4.5-hour form. The CBC halted the transmission of an "important football game" in order to broadcast the entirety of the Kronos Quartet performance live.It was performed in abridged form a number of times thereafter, and a planned 1996 performance of the complete work by the Kronos Quartet was cancelled when the group "found... in rehearsals... that are now unable to perform the work for purely physical reasons." The players reported back and shoulder pain following the commencement of rehearsals for the cancelled performance. String Quartet No. 2 was finally performed in full in 1999, by the FLUX Quartet at Cooper Union, in a performance lasting from 7:30 PM to 1:30 AM.
Of the challenges of playing the quartet, FLUX Quartet founder Tom Chiu wrote:
The quartet has been performed by Networks at ISSUE Project Room in 2010, the Spektral Quartet at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2017. Three recordings of String Quartet No. 2 have been issued: one by the Ives Ensemble, one by the FLUX Quartet, and one by the Pellegrini Quartet.