Composer George Rochberg (born in 1918 in Patterson, NJ) recalls that in 1953, it seemed a daring thing for a committed twelve-tone composer such as himself to suddenly write a straight arrangement of a Baroque masterpiece. Able to find and communicate meanings and moods in the serial system, Rochberg was an early convert to twelve-tone music, considered after World War II as a leading hope for the spread of serial music. Rochberg uses the words "uneasy" and "disturbed" to describe the reaction of his contemporaries who were part of the small avant garde serial music community when Rochberg presented this entirely tonal work. The international avant garde, he said in notes to this orchestration, "was trying hard to erase from memory the glories of old" and considered such music as this "finished, obsolete." From a perspective decades removed from that time, his decision to orchestrate a set of variations by Samuel Scheidt (1587—1654) seems a foretaste of his decision made in 1963 to stop writing in the serial (twelve-tone) system and eventually write in whatever tonal or atonal style seemed appropriate for the project. Therefore, this orchestration is an early example of postmodernism, using the term to mean a style that abandons the notion that in the progress of music, it is necessary to use newer, "modern" styles and leave prior styles to the times that created them. Rochberg, in his notes to this setting, also cited his great affection for Baroque variation forms as a reason to produce it. He said he plays "endless sets" of them on piano, citing their sober quality, intellectual stimulation in their counterpoint, and their "rich, harmonic thinking." Accordingly, this is a straight setting of Scheidt's music (unlike, for instance, Stravinsky's tendency to tinker with inner voices in order to put his stamp on it). It is for a small orchestra and uses trumpet, oboe, and trombone as leading voices.

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