This quartet was premiered at the National Gallery in London, on October 12, 1944, by the Menges Quartet. The dedication attached to the title (required by the composer) pertains to the violist of the Menges Quartet at the time, Jean Stewart (Mrs. George Hadley). Though this work is generally numbered the Second Quartet of Vaughan Williams, it was actually the Third, there being a C minor Quartet, from 1898, suppressed by the composer, that preceded the official First, the G minor (1908). More than 30 years separate this A minor effort from the G minor, Vaughan Williams largely turning away from the chamber music genre after the First World War.

The Second Quartet consists of four movements, with the first (Prelude: Allegro appassionato) being the shortest and the second (Romance: Largo) lasting almost as long as the other three combined. The opening panel is intense and dark, reflecting the wartime atmosphere in England and looking backward to the violence of the Fourth Symphony (1931 - 1934). The viola dominates here, as it does throughout most of the work. The muscular, agitated main theme permeates the whole movement, its ominous, insistent character unrelenting and headstrong to crowd out any competing music.

The second movement sounds more funereal and mournful than its "Romance" marking would suggest. The music turns sweeter in the middle section, though, but does not alter the overall somber character of this long panel. The third movement Scherzo (Allegro) borrows a theme Vaughan Williams used in his film score The 49th Parallel (1940 - 1941): it is an ominous, threatening theme played by viola to muted tremolo accompaniment from the other three instruments. The resulting spooky atmosphere augurs the mood, if not the music in the composer's later related pair of works, the film score for Scott of the Antarctic (1948) and its offshoot the Sinfonia Antartica (Symphony No. 7; 1949 - 1952). The finale employs a theme Vaughan Williams intended to use in a film about Joan of Arc, and he thus subtitled the movement "Greetings from Joan to Jean." The composer takes this serene and beautiful melody and makes it sound remarkably similar to the main theme in the finale of his recently-completed Symphony No. 5 (1938 - 1943), especially as it appears in the celestial closing pages of the score. This is, in sum, one of Vaughan Williams' most important chamber works.

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