String Quartet No. 2 (Borodin)

The String Quartet No. 2 is a string quartet in D major written by Alexander Borodin in 1881. It was dedicated to his wife Ekaterina Protopova. Some scholars, such as Borodin’s biographer Serge Dianin, suggest that the quartet was a 20th anniversary gift and that it has a program evoking the couple’s first meeting in Heidelberg. Of its four movements, the third movement “Notturno” is the most famous, and part of it was adapted into the song “And This Is My Beloved” from the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet.

Borodin wrote the string quartet quickly in 1881 while staying at the estate of his friend, the minor composer Nikolai Lodyzhensky, which was located in Zhitovo, southeast of Moscow. Borodin also composed the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia the same year; the quartet premiered in that year or the next. (The external links give a more complete tale but conflict on the date.)

The string quartet has four movements:

The first movement is written in sonata form. The principal theme of the exposition begins in measure one, with a cello singing a lyrical melody in high register.

The transition begins in measure 35, and quickly leads into the subordinate theme (measure 44) in A major, the dominant.

The subordinate theme has a complex structure, a three-part form of its own (a-b-a'), which leads into the closing theme in measure 86 (Animato), which concludes the exposition in measure 107. The development (beginning in measure 108) begins with the same material as the exposition, except the cello is in the low register, and the key is changed from D major to F major. After some contrapuntal work, the development reaches a dominant pedal point (measure 167), which resolves in the main key of the piece, D major, in the recapitulation in measure 180. The recapitulation follows the broad outlines of the exposition, except the subordinate theme (measure 224) begins in E-flat major instead of the customary D major. The three-part structure of the subordinate theme, though, allows Borodin to reach the expected D major in the a' part of the subordinate theme (measure 257), and the closing theme (measure 266) concludes the movement.

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