Written in Vienna in March 1782 as a replacement finale for the Piano Concerto K. 175, which Mozart had composed nine years earlier in Salzburg and now wanted to play to a Viennese audience. The new movement is a set of variations on a simple march-like tune rather than a rondo in the strict sense. It succeeded at once: Mozart wrote to his father that it was making a furore, and asked him to guard the manuscript closely so that nobody could copy it. It is often played today as a separate piece.