It displays elements of baroque musical forms popular in the neo-baroque revitalization that characterized Milhaud's time.
Mawer notes some characteristics common to Milhaud's compositions in his early years that can be applied to the Chamber Symphonies.
They include: "chromaticism bordering on atonality, a distinctive jazz-inspired modality, and a surprising aleatoric element, bound together by neoclassical aesthetic.
A similar motif is played between the bassoons, with alternating minor seconds and major seventh intervals instead.
The motivic cell of this movement centers on a stepwise descent from D to A, which then jumps back up to D in an alternating double-dotted sixteenth, followed by a thirty-second note pattern.