The premiere of Kurtág's so-called "third string quartet," composed in 1988-89, took place at the 1989 Witten Festival in the performance of the Auryn String Quartet. In this work, the composer sought to combine two fundamentally different musical worlds: the music of Anton Webern and Endre Szervánszky (1911-1977). The individual movements of the piece are rooted in personal relationships, undergo multiple transformations and are randomly connected to each other. The two musical quotes (Webern: Canon op. 31 VI. and Szervánszky: Serenade for Strings, movement III) appear in the middle and at the end of the composition.