By 1896, at the age of twenty-five, Alexander Zemlinsky was one of the rising stars in the Viennese musical firmament. His first opera had been written, he had won a number of awards, and he had earned the support of Johannes Brahms. In july of the same year he began writing his first string quartet, a work of sweeping lyricism, rich dance patterns, and self-confidence, couched within the bounds of a relatively conventional palette. Seventeen years later he began his second quartet; kaleidoscopic in effect, mood, and technical demands, and redolent of the music of the new century – led by his brother-in-in-law Arnold Schoenberg – it was to place Zemlinsky securely in the European avant-garde.