[1] The work consists of seven movements played without pause:[1] The piece is written to evoke images of the idyll, and does so by employing many extended string techniques, such as harmonics and glissandi.
Reviewing a 1999 performance by the Borromeo String Quartet, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Ades's Arcadiana, written in 1994, is meant to be an evocation of paradise in seven short movements.
One moment dark, sliding string figures evoke a dance of death; the next is a serene paean to England in slow, gracefully consonant chordal passages."
He continued, "Mr. Ades evokes a pantheon of sorts in fleeting, subtle, half-submerged references to Mozart, Schubert, Elgar and Wagner.
"[5] Andrew Mellor of Gramophone was slightly more critical of the composition, however, observing, "I have reservations about Arcadiana, only because it shows how far Adès has come (since 1993) when viewed against a more recent masterpiece such as In Seven Days, which in a sense has the same goal but achieves more with less.
He wrote, "Arcadiana [...] is a seven-movement string quartet whose central and longest movement (not very long: just over four minutes) contains an extraordinary range of precisely imagined, highly original textures and yet in its penultimate section can settle to a serene and wonderfully beautiful adagio whose sound and mood can only be conveyed by the adjective 'Beethovenian'.