Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a decade of compositional activity where the composer was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only three orchestral works were written, The Turfan Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel Beckett (1987). With the String Quartet, Feldman’s attention turned almost exclusively to chamber music, and particularly, to the long piece. This change, however, was not made without a certain degree of uncertainty.

The String Quartet was first performed on 4th May, 1980, by the Columbia Quartet at the Drawing Center in New York City. The performance lasted well over one and a half hours, hence the nick-name of “100 minutes” by which this