In September 1933 Enescu was abruptly summoned from Paris to Bucharest in order to care for Maruca Cantacuzino [ro; fr], his future wife with whom he had a sometimes troubled relationship since 1914, and who had suffered a mental collapse.

Enescu cancelled all of his obligations abroad in order to tend her through the winter, and then fell ill himself with heart trouble, compelling him to extend his leave from the concert stage for the rest of the year.

This was on the initiative of her adult children, Constantin ("Bâzu") and Alice Cantacuzino, who subsequently took legal action to ensure she would no longer be allowed to govern her own financial affairs.

Enescu took on the expenses caused by her condition and retreated to a room in the basement of a rented house on the Kiseleff Boulevard in Bucharast, where he devoted himself as best he could to composition.

Shortly after its initial completion, Enescu wrote to Edmond Fleg, librettist of his opera Œdipe, reporting on 30 January 1934, "I console myself by taking refuge in composition.

Despite the winding, meditative, drifting, doina character of the movement, it is cast in a sonata-allegro form, but this time with two development sections, an unusually complex recapitulation, and a coda.