The work progressed fairly quickly: “During the twelve days here [he was writing from the Artists’ Retreat in Nieborów] I wrote 13 Choralvorspiele by Bach for orchestra [...]. I simply selected the most beautiful ones from the Orgelbüchlein and turned them into a 20-minute cycle” (Zygmunt Mycielski, Dziennik 1960–1969, Iskry, Warsaw 2001, p. 216).

Mycielski wanted to avoid bombastic, powerful instrumentations known from arrangements by Leopold Stokowski (Toccata and Fugue in D minor) and Igor Stravinsky (Vom Himmel Hoch), although he suspected that this “lack of a ‘gravy’”, to which listeners got used to in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, might cause the score to be left unperformed. Extremely pleased with the final outcome, he was moved by the beauty of the finished arrangement, particularly appreciating the words of Jan Krenz – son of a pastor – when he was recording the piece in January 1966 with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. The importance of this arrangement to the composer is also revealed in a letter he wrote in October 1973 to Andrzej Panufnik, with quotes from Bach’s works and the following remark: “I would like this to be played during my funeral” (letter of 24 October 1973, cf. Zygmunt Mycielski – Andrzej Panufnik. Korespondencja, part II, ed., introduction and commentary Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska, Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 2018, p. 5).