Choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes)

One of Satie's infrequent excursions into chamber music, the Choses vues is contemporaneous with the bulk of his humoristic piano suites (1913-1914) and was conceived in a similar spirit.

[2] It has been interpreted as a spoof of academic musical training, in particular that of the Schola Cantorum in Paris,[3] where the composer had recently ended his studies (at age 46) with Vincent d'Indy.

[5] The 10-bar Choral hypocrite, played on muted strings, is built of stark self-contained phrases and hardly resembles the sort of singable "tune" one would expect from the genre.

Fantaisie musculaire (Muscular Fantasy) - C Major - Un peu vif This playfully ironic showpiece burlesques violin virtuosity but nevertheless requires considerable skill from the performer.

[7] It presents often dissonant send-ups of string techniques (harmonics, pizzicato, trill, glissando), culminating with a cadenza, which the player is advised to launch into "with enthusiasm" and end "very sheepishly and coldly."

Satie dedicated it to violinist Marcel Chailley (1881-1936), who with pianist Ricardo Viñes gave the premiere at the Ecole Lucien de Flagny in Paris on April 2, 1916.