“The Second String Quartet was Leoš Janáček’s last complete work, written shortly before his death in 1928. The music is a spontaneous expression of his feelings for Kamila Stösslová, a married woman forty years his younger, whom Janáček had met in 1917. While it remains doubtful whether Janáček’s feelings were reciprocated, given his unhappy marriage, where the loss of two children played a major role, the connection with the younger Stösslová nevertheless provided for a rebirth of his creative power. It gave him great happiness in his final years of life. Kamila died seven years after Janáček, at forty three years of age. “
– Christopher Bruce