In 1920, Villa-Lobos composed a guitar piece first titled Chôro típico, and slightly later republished as Chôro típico brasileiro, taking his title from an improvisational genre of Brazilian instrumental popular music that originated in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century.

The Portuguese word choro (pronounced [ˈʃoɾu]), means "cry" or "lament", though most music of this type is far from being sorrowful.

Four years later, at the time of his first visit to Paris, he decided to create an extended cycle of works collectively titled Chôros.

The European premiere was given by Gaston Blanquart (flute), and Louis Cahuzac (clarinet), at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 24 October 1927, on the first of a pair of concerts devoted to works by Villa-Lobos.

10–11 (consisting of two consecutive, chromatically descending figures, the second slightly higher than the first) is very similar to the main motif of Chôros No.

[3] Harmonically, the course of the work is produced by the interaction between diatonic structures on the one hand and more complex pitch collections drawn from the chromatic, whole-tone, and octatonic scales.