As a teenager in the early 1950s, Wolff joined the circle that included John Cage , Earle Brown , and Morton Feldman , with whom he continued to be associated while pursuing academic degrees in the classics, which he has taught at Harvard and teaches lately at Dartmouth. The mark of Wolff’s early music was a limited number of pitches—three for his Duo for Violin and Piano, four for Trio for Flute, Cello, and Trumpet (1951), tending, in David Revill’s words,...