Five years after the first, I set out to write a second sonata for the guitar I loved. And not only in order to be able to keep the overall title of the cycle (which is hereby closed), with its clear relation to Richard III, but also because of my attachment to Shakespeare's characters, or at least some of them, whose musical portrait I also want to make in of the second sonata, which was formed in a completely different way, felt compelled to do so. Aguecheek (Bleichenwang) is one of my favorite characters when I was a student in Braunschweig. Perhaps it was not only Shakespeare, but also the director and the Bleichenwang of a production in the theater there, around 1943, that caused me not to miss a performance of it. - Hans-Werner Henze