At the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 1952, Benjamin Britten had attended the premiere of La guirlande de Campra, a collaborative work by seven French composers, and this gave him the idea of inviting several English composers to join him in each writing a variation on a theme from the time of the first Queen Elizabeth to honour her modern-day successor.
Edmund Rubbra initially agreed, but pulled out of the project at the eleventh hour, at which time Arthur Oldham and Humphrey Searle were brought in.
[1][2] The theme was Sellinger's Round or The Beginning of the World, an Irish dance tune, as harmonised for the keyboard by William Byrd, the leading composer from the time of Elizabeth I.
[1][2] The work was structured as follows: The public premiere was held on 20 June 1953, as part of the Coronation Choral Concert at the 1953 Aldeburgh Festival.
The new sequence of eight variations was given its premiere by the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Paul Watkins, in the Cadogan Hall, London, on 24 August 2013.