Completed in 1955 to fulfill a commission for the Louisville Orchestra, this work was first performed by that organization in April of 1956. While very much 1950s leading edge, the work is nonetheless somewhat less severe than some of Carter's other works, some of which were swamped with jangling and inarticulate percussion effects. Based upon three musical ideas, the work is a group of nine variations on an introductory allegro theme, all of which resides within a logical structure. Because variation occurs in time, pitch, and register, the relationship among them becomes mathematical and the listener may encounter frustration in attempting to sort and count them. The composer's own descriptive notes may or may not help: "Each variation has its own shape, too, as a mode of musical behavior, helps define character. For instance, the first variation and the finale are rapid dialogues of many contrasting motives in contrasting rhythms. The second variation presents contrast of character by quoting the theme almost literally and confronting it simultaneously with is own variants by intervallic expansion and diminution. The third contrasts an expressive line played against dense chords with transparent fragmentary motives. The fourth is a continual retardation, the sixth an accelerating series of limitations. Between these two, the fifth obliterates contrast in a succession of chords using the notes of the theme." And so on. Heard with an open mind, the work actually seems an integrated whole in which themes and ideas are more concepts than actual structures and in performance it seizes the attention and maintains this by a sort of instinctive development which carries the listener along. As with many works of this type, it is evidently barbarically difficult to perform and record but is a model of twelve-tone orchestral writing.

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