Although reluctant to return to string quartet writing nineteen years after his still unpublished First String Quartet, Austrian-American composer Eric Zeisl contributed a significant piece to the string quartet repertoire. Zeisl composed his Second String Quartet in Los Angeles, the city that welcomed the composer in his exile.

In addition to a short biography of Zeisl, this study investigates the context in which the Second Quartet was written. This paper also approaches Zeisl's quartet from the perspective of a string quartet player, and offers in depth guidance to performers wishing to present this work. Chapter III includes a structural analysis of the piece, and highlights Zeisl's remarkably sophisticated use of contrapuntal techniques and blending of various idioms. Chapter IV compares the manuscript, housed in UCLA's Charles E. Young Library, to the printed edition, and offers solutions to the discrepancies between these sources. Also in chapter IV, a discussion of the difficulties of performing this work suggests solution to performers wishing to interpret this quartet, which richly deserves a place in the repertoire of every professional quartet.