Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet 1931 moves through four compact, radically unconventional movements.

The quartet has four movements — Rubato assai, Leggiero, Andante, and Allegro possibile — but don’t expect anything traditional. Crawford Seeger’s 1931 quartet is one of the most daring American chamber works of its era, pushing harmonic language and formal structure far beyond what anyone else was doing at the time.