A number of sketches for this work were made in Greece in the summer of 1958. When the work was finished, I dedicated it to Benjamin Britten. In 1963, on the occasion of the 60th birthday of my old friend Josef Rufer, I added an epilogue in which I recapture the mood of the whole work and introduce a sort of quotation from Schönberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, as a greeting to Rufer who devoted his whole life to the Viennese master. - Hans Werner Henze