The Quartet for Piano and Strings of 1950 was the first piece in which Copland employed the Schoenbergian method of composition with 12 tones. Copland, however, chose to use only 11 pitches in his primary row, omitting A natural. He constructed his 11-note row such that it produces the two whole-tone scales, enabling him to avoid much of the crushing dissonance people usually associate with non-tonal music. The Piano Quartet was premiered in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 1950.

Copland may have left behind the folk-based style he had long pursued and returned to the adventurous path of his youth because he believed that the public was, by 1950, ready for more "modern" music. If so, he was wrong. Although praised by other composers, the Piano Quartet never achieved the popularity of his works in the "American" style.

In three movements, the Piano Quartet employs few of the techniques generally associated with modern, atonal composition, aside from the row theme. All three movements have themes derived form this row (mostly from its first four notes), but the sound of the work is predominantly tonal. Copland had this to say about 12-tone composition: "The attraction of the method for me was that I began to hear chords that I wouldn't have heard otherwise. This was a new way of moving tones about."

Copland begins the first movement, Adagio serio, by presenting the tone row imitatively in both its primary form and inversion. The secondary theme, in the cello, is a retrograde inversion of the row and is treated in much the same way as the first theme. Because of the descending whole steps of the row (depending on the rhythm, it can sound like "Three Blind Mice"), it is easy to pick out during the course of the movement, the entirety of which is built on the row. The transparency of the piece, as well as its tonal orientation, set it apart from the serialist mainstream.

Marked Allegro giusto, the second movement is in a stylized sonata-rondo form. Melodic material is not as strictly derived from the tone row as it is in the first movement, although motives of four or five ascending or descending whole steps are ubiquitous and inform almost all of the movement's material. The four instruments are treated more equally here than in the first movement, and most of the texture is linear, creating passages of four or even five parts. Episodes separate reprises of the opening theme, and the first of these episodes returns in a modified form.

Copland's finale does not provide the energetic close one might expect. Strings begin the movement with rising phrases before the piano enters with repetitions of the first notes of the row. Thematic transformation anticipates the arrival of the chorale-like secondary theme, which is also derived from the row. Multiple statements of the descending theme in the viola, cello, and piano close the movement slowly and quietly.

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