In 1971 the London-based music magazine Tempo commissioned a number of short works to commemorate the passing of Igor Stravinsky; Alfred Schnittke's work for string quartet, Canon in Memory of Igor Stravinsky, was one of them. A deliberate and concentrated work, the Canon is not a true canon, but a study in heterophony: a series of short phrases is played by each of the quartet members, but in different rhythms. (Unlike many works that use this technique, the rhythms in the Canon are fastidiously notated by Schnittke, rather than aleatoric.) The result is a series of anguished chromatic chords, created by the interaction of each phrase with its rhythmically displaced self in the other voices of the quartet. These phrases follow each other directly through much of the work, but sometimes are separated by extremely long pauses; silence takes on its own significance here—it is more than just a bookend for sound.

At the beginning of the work the phrases are terse and undeveloped, but they begin to grow outward in tonal range and length until the piece reaches its climax. Afterward the phrases contract in a similar fashion, until there is only a quiet shudder remaining. The peculiar expressive quality and relative simplicity of this work suggest that Schnittke's testament to Stravinsky was indeed heartfelt.

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