NeologisticsMusicSelahThe Compositions Begin → String Quartet 1960
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This is a section about a third of the way into a String Quartet I wrote in 1960. It used odd meters in places such as 5/12 (not shown here). Even though I also wrote a one-measure slow movement (really slow!), I have never really counted this work as a real string quartet because I never wrote a third movement, so considered it unfinished, and never even attempted to get a reading of it.

I'm not sure why I was so quick to poo-poo this piece. On review I find that it is longer, more ambitious, and more carefully written than almost anything else I did in high school. The experiment with rhythm, although I never went further with it, was forward looking, and was rooted in the same kind of thinking that produced Elliott Carter's technique of rhythmic modulation, which I knew nothing about at the time.

String Quartet (1960)