Cadenza on the Night Plain epitomizes the unique relationship between composer and ensemble that minimalist guru Terry Riley developed with the boundary-bending Kronos Quartet. Riley composed several works for the ensemble, beginning in the 1980s, and as he and they both served on the faculty at Mills college, the group collaborated closely in the development of the works Riley wrote for them and played a crucial role in the development of Riley's approach to the string quartet medium. Cadenza on the Night Plain is not the last work Riley composed for the group; indeed, subsequent collaborations would include the monumental quartet cycle Salome Dances for Peace, as well as the heartwrenching and intimate Requiem for Adam, composed in response to the tragic death of Kronos violinist David Harrington's teenage son. Still, the indelible connection found in these later works between musical style and intended performer had been established firmly in Cadenza, elements of which were composed specifically to suit the personalities and artistic voices of the individual members of Kronos.

The structure of the piece follows two tandem trajectories. The first is a loose program or narrative that explores the Western sense of Eastern spirituality that defined Riley's involvement in the countercultural movement of the '60s and '70s, as well as Riley's sense of identity as an American and an activist. This topic is approached in an earnest but sometimes lighthearted way. The first scene, with the ponderous title "Where was Wisdom When We Went West," is laden with a sense of sorrow and guilt over America's expansionist and colonialist history; this is conveyed musically through passages of conflicted counterpoint, somber melodies, and pungent intonational inflection. A subsequent scene, however, assesses hippie idealism and activism with self-conscious humor. Bearing the quirky title "March of the Old Timers Reefer Division," it stumbles along unceremoniously in distinctly un-marchable odd meters. Later episodes draw on themes from Native American history and mythology: "Tuning to Rolling Thunder," for example, draws an analogy between musical sensitivity and one's sensitivity to the voice of the land, as embodied in the figure of the medicine man Rolling Thunder. The collection of scenes that comprise this loose foreground narrative are framed by a series of solo cadenzas, each one written for (and, in the 1984 Gramavision recording, executed by) a different member of the Kronos Quartet. These are colorful virtuosic displays, each with their own character, but all drawn together by certain music gestures recalled from the piece's introductory material.

Beneath the narrative outlined in the work's subtitles Riley conveys, through his compositional materials, a related subtext. The work utilizes specialized tunings and intonations that resist the efficiency and quantization of the equal temperament system in favor of greater expressive diversity. This is encountered most dramatically in the introduction and the cadenzas, where unisons and open fifths slip into shimmering dissonances. "Tuning" on the musical level is made by Riley to symbolize an attunement with the landscape.

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