A complete list of all compositions for string quartet by Canadian composers is, practically speaking, an impossible goal. Hundreds of new works for string quartet are written every year - as student harmony or orchestration exercises, as composition studies, or simply to provide something new for a few friends to play. There is a continuous range of works for string quartet all the way from these private offerings up to skilled works by professional composers which are published, recorded and widely played. A line must be drawn somewhere to set an arbitrary limit to a list such as the following one. Accordingly, included in this list are only those works which have in some way entered into the wider public domain, either by being deposited with a library, through being mentioned in one of the secondary sources listed in the bibliography of this thesis, or by being performed in a public concert. This list is as complete as I have been able to make it given the present state of research, but I have no doubt omitted some, possibly many, works.

The list is organized chronologically by year of composition and, within each year, alphabetically by composer's surname. For some works it was only possible to give the year of composition; for complete entries, the information is organized as follows:

Explanation of these categories:

Year - year in which the first version of the work was completed; information about revisions is provided under "Other relevant information about the work."

Name of composer - surname in capitals, followed by first name(s).

Title of composition - generic titles have been translated into English; other titles appear in the original language.

Other relevant information about the work - the date of any major revisions of the work; information on dedications; place where the work was written and when the composer came to Canada in the case of composers not resident in Canada at the time the work was composed; other titles by which the work is known; any transcriptions of the whole work or any part of it; and any other details that are of interest.

Source - a location where a score of the work may be consulted; in most but not all cases this refers to a manuscript copy of the work or a reproduction of a manuscript copy of the work; information on publication is given in a separate entry. Locations are given in abbreviated form - see "Library Sigla" below.

Duration - when duration is given in minutes only, it is based on an estimate provided either by the composer in the score or by some other source; durations in minutes and seconds are exact timings of a performance of the work.

Publication information - publisher and year of publication are given where possible.

Premiere performance - the name of the ensemble or, in the case of ad hoc ensembles, the name of the first violinist, is followed by the city in which the premiere took place and the date on which it happened. Dates are given in the order day/month/year [e.g. 8/2/1925 = 8 February 1925].

Canadian premiere - provided if available for works premiered outside of Canada.

Recordings - commercial recordings, some private recordings, and air-check tapes available for listening at the Canadian Music Centre are listed.

Literature - works listed in the Bibliography of this thesis are abbreviated to include only the author's name, the year of the publication and the page references; full citations are provided in the Bibliography.

Library Sigla