On 1 December 1943 Mycielski wrote from the POW camp:

I confess I have gon in my mind through Five Symphonic Sketches[,] which I’ve had in my head for a long time and which I would like to see the world – (for no one else will write them). Monologue, Aria, Dialogue, Romance, Chorus – for symphony orchestra. Perhaps I will find 100 free days I need for that. [...] 52nd month of the war has begun (Mycielski’s letter to his mother, 1 December 1943).  

He had to wait until the end of the war to begin his creative endeavours. While still in Paris, in August 1945, he completed the Sketches, even before his arrival in Poland. The work was performed in Poland on 15 March 1946 in Kraków (Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Walerian Bierdiajew). 

The critics noticed first of all a change of style in comparison with Mycielski’s neoclassically-tinged pre-war oeuvre. The miniatures are characterised by an asceticism of means manifested in an extremely rarefied texture, departure from a multi-plane musical narrative in favour of highlighting the melodic line and reducing the remaining instruments – added sparingly – to a harmonic complement (here we see a return of chord parallelisms and frequent use of dissonances known from Mycielski’s earlier oeuvre). It is only in building climaxes that Mycielski makes use of dynamic fluctuation enhanced by a gradual expansion of the line-up, using contrapuntal means typical of his own pre-war chamber music, thus achieving an extraordinary dramaturgical effect. Henryk Swolkień (“Życie muzyczne w kraju. Warszawa”, Ruch Muzyczny 1948 no. 8, p. 13.) stressed the cohesion of the cycle with the following “triad”: “Everything [...] is conscious, his own and refined”, while Stefania Łobaczewska (“Współczesna muzyka polska na koncertach krakowskich”, Dziennik Polski 7 February 1947) described the composition as follows: “Above all he [Mycielski] seeks musical expression, concentration, mood, and this is where he achieves interesting results, often of very personal nature”.