As a child, Miklós Rózsa often spent his summers on his family’s estate north of Budapest. There, in the fields and villages, he listened to the music of the Páloc, a northern Hungarian ethnic group. He later traveled through the region and – inspired by the works of his role models Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály – wrote down the songs he heard there as inspiration for his own compositions.

Like the North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances op. 5, the Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song op. 4 were composed towards the end of Rózsa's time as a student in Leipzig in 1929. It is the first of many variation works that he composed throughout his life. It is dedicated to his uncle and former teacher, the "master Ludwig Berkovits in gratitude". At the age of five, Rózsa had begun taking violin lessons from him.