Members of the composers' group at the 1948 Cambridge Summer Music School collectively composed the Variations on a Theme by Douglas Lilburn. Lilburn, as tutor, provided a theme ripe with challenges. David Farquhar, Ronald Dellow, Edwin Carr, Dorothea Franchi, Ronald Tremain, and Larry Pruden supplied variations. Franchi recalled performing the set at the School's closing concert "all except the final variation, which was still being written as I was playing the theme! Larry Pruden was always late and he ended up by playing his own variation, improvising the end."