George Perle, now an instructor at the University of Louisville, was born in 1915, in Bayonne, New Jersey. He began work on the Third String Quartet in 1946 in Japan and completed it the following year in New York City. It was presented for the first time at a concert of the Forum Group of the International Society for Contemporary Music, in New York City on Feb. 7, 1948. The work is based on the following twelve-tone series, and its permutations and transpositions: d; e-flat; a-flat; b; c; f-sharp; c-sharp; f-natural; g; a; e; b-flat. The score is arranged in the present publication in such a way as to render unnecessary the extraction of parts for performance. Each player may read his part directly from a copy of the score.