Trois mouvements perpetuels, FP 14

Three perpetual-motion miniatures composed in 1918 when Poulenc was barely nineteen. Each piece is built on an almost hypnotic ostinato texture with spare, witty melodic cells drifting above. Influenced by Satie's anti-romantic aesthetic, they caused a sensation at their premiere and remain among the most immediately appealing works of the French neoclassical movement. No. 1 in Bb is the best known, its simple repeated-note figure carrying an air of detached, knowing charm.