Britten reported to fellow composer Oliver Knussen on January 21, 1976, that his physical condition only permitted "an occasional tiny bit of writing".

Britten's remaining compositions after he completed the opera Death in Venice in 1973, according to Ian Tait, the composer's general practitioner, were "more in response to the expectations of others—more not to let them down, than because of any overwhelming passion in himself".

He proposed that Britten compose the work's theme based on the Sacher hexachord, the dedicatee's musical monogram.

This is followed by a perpetuum mobile based on the notes E and D.[7] The musicologist Arnold Whittall said that the work is "more concerned with the manipulation or developing variation of foregrounded materials than with the composing out of deeper, foundational background forces".

[9] Universal Edition first published it together with its companion works in the collection 12 Hommages à Paul Sacher pour violoncelle.

[11] Whittall, in his survey of Britten's music for cello, expressed a contrasting opinion:[12] [The] expansive and resolute rhetoric of this brief tribute seems to unite respect for Sacher to a still-vivid delight in Rostropovich's forceful personality and supremely refined instrumental technique.