To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a String Quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but devote itself instead to music written after 1900, especially newly-composed works. But the Kronos Quartet has proved the skeptics wrong. Founded in Seattle in 1973, and reformed in San Francisco five years later, the Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major player on the international music scene, premiering hundreds of new works by living composers.

On today’s date in 1984, the Kronos Quartet was at the Kukmo Music Festival in Finland, where they gave the premiere performance of the 5th String Quartet of the Finnish composer, Aulis Sallinen, subtitled “Pieces of Mosaic.” This quartet is a string of 16 short fragments, and, as the composer explained, reflected a pessimistic view of world affairs, circa 1984, the ominously Orwellian year of its composition. “It seems somehow crazy,” said Sallinen, “that a composer should create extended symphonic forms for the world we live in. This quartet is the kind of work the world deserves: one which is smashed into fragments.”

Sallinen is one of the best-known Finnish composers since Sibelius, and in addition to chamber works like his Fifth Quartet, he has written symphonic works and a number of successful operas.