Moreover, the work is considerably more than a facile exercise based on classical models; there are already indications of the Ives to come, in the extensive quotations and, above all, in the composer's ability to bend the form to suit the idiosyncrasies of his own musical inclinations.
[3] After arranging these for string quartet, Ives prepended a fugue written for Parker's counterpoint class to create a four-movement work.
"[5] After Ives's death, John Kirkpatrick discovered the original opening movement in the collection of manuscripts bequeathed to Yale, and reattached it to the quartet.
It was played, in its three-movement form, by the Kohon String Quartet, who also issued the first recording of the work in 1963 (Vox STDL-501120).
I used it, or partly suggested it, in a string quartet..."[20] The B section is again based largely on transformations of "Shining Shore".
"[17] He also noted that "Shining Shore" is "present in all three movements and linked through melodic transformation or resemblance to the... other source tunes.
In each movement, it is the main source for the middle-section theme, and its opening motive appears explicitly at some point.
Whenever two or more tunes are mixed, it is present..."[11] Burkholder stated that Ives' use of cyclic forms "is apparent not only in his obvious concern to unify this quartet through such means, but also in the many works written over the next two decades that use cyclic unification, including the first three symphonies, the two piano sonatas, and the Third Violin Sonata.