Usko Meriläinen's first string quartet is a serial work completed in 1965. The ground occupied by the work is closer than ever to the second Viennese school proper. Meriläinen makes a deliberate attempt to break notational taboos. In two places in the second movement - each of about 10 bars - he makes use of time-space notation in a way typical of his work, thereby discarding precisely defined durational relationships.