After Schoenberg immigrated to the United States in 1933, his compositional output slowed. In part this was due to the stress of moving itself, first from Europe to Boston in 1933, then to Los Angeles in 1934, and in part to his teaching activities. Despite his reasonably rapid acclimation to his new environment (especially to Los Angeles) his productivity did not increase, due in part to the distressing news concerning the treatment of his relatives in Austria; but also because he could find no audience for the music he wished to write. Between 1936 and 1940 he completed only two original works, the Kol nidre, Op. 39, and the Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 38.

In the late 1930s Schoenberg reached yet another turning point. Since the experiments of the 1920s that led to his development of the 12-tone "system" of composition, Schoenberg had been applying his ideas to models drawn from earlier periods of Western music history. As his search progressed through the Baroque and Classical eras and into the Romantic, he found himself confronted with his own early style. This may be the reason he attempted to rework his Chamber Symphony No. 2, begun immediately after he had finished the Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, in July 1906, and set down in 1916.

Described by Schoenberg himself as tonal in 1948, his Chamber Symphony No. 2 elicited an artistic "soul search." When he picked up the sketches for the work in 1938, he found he was not the same composer he had been in 1906. Schoenberg changed little of the first movement, but nearly half of the second was newly composed, and he added what he called a "third movement" that functions more as a coda to the second.

After a hesitant introduction reminiscent of Verklärte Nacht, a rising string theme begins immediate development, the increased tension reaching a climax culminating in silence. Low strings enter under a flute playing an inversion of the string theme before cellos begin a new theme, which is taken up by trumpet and clarinet. The piece continues with extended development of this material, featuring a Mahlerian tendency for a melody or figure to begin in one instrument and move to another. Harmonies tend to move by step, often with all parts moving in parallel. The close of the movement revisits the earlier themes, although re-orchestrated and at a slower tempo. The rambunctious second movement, marked con fuoco, shows the influence of Schoenberg's work since 1906. Seemingly unrelated elements occur simultaneously, and the total fabric of the composition is much thicker than that of the first movement. A more aggressive overall atmosphere includes pizzicato passages and sharp brass attacks, and the orchestration in general is more representative of later Schoenberg. The slow coda takes up some of the material from the opening, while chords built on fourths make up a large part of a tonal scheme that, again, features harmonies that move by step.

Fritz Stiedry conducted the premiere of the Chamber Symphony No. 2 in New York on December 15, 1940. Stiedry had known Schoenberg since October 1924 when he conducted the premiere of Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand in Vienna. It is possible that Stiedry urged Schoenberg to complete his Chamber Symphony No. 2, for there exists correspondence from the composer to the conductor relating his progress on the work.

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