Late in 1946, after spending nearly three years in a POW camp, Rausch had a burst of creativity. In 1947 alone he wrote a Mass for organ, a serenade for winds and strings, a violin sonata, a song cycle, and, lastly, this set of variations for piano. Though the Metamorphosen is pianistic in ways, the contrapuntal textures and subtle interior lines could indicate he was thinking orchestrally but wrote the work for piano merely out of practical considerations.