Compiled in 1902, the Pièces brèves are a mixed bag. The two fugues date from 1869, the days of Fauré's first appointment, after graduation from the prestigious Parisian École Niedermeyer, as church organist in the provincial village of Rennes, while the first and fifth pieces were composed—in 1899 and 1901, respectively—as sight-reading exercises for the Paris Conservatoire. The four remaining items, from 1902, were unprompted by occasion and afford fleeting glimpses of Fauré at a stylistic crossroads. Moreover, they were the only part of the set played at the premiere performance—by Ricardo Viñes at a concert of the Société Nationale de musique, April 18, 1903. Hamelle's initial edition, issued in 1902 as Huit pièces brèves, conformed to the composer's wishes in foregoing titles in favor of a simple statement of key. To the composer's disgust, however, a later edition added the titles which are now inseparable from the music.

No. 1, the so-called Capriccio, is all airy graciousness, the play of light through spray. The Fantasie (No. 2) revisits this scene with greater piquancy, in more elusive strokes. If the first of the two fugues (No. 3) is more dutiful than inspired, the second (No. 6) rises tautly to the challenge of the form, hazarding a stretto amid some recognizably Fauré-typical harmonic touches. Almost nonchalant, in its acerb spareness, the Adagietto (No. 4) looks ahead to the spectral, oracular world of the late Barcarolles and Nocturnes, a bracing change of pace disarmingly followed by the sketch-like Improvisation which, in a mere 28 bars, distills a moment of surprising passion. The Allégresse (No. 7), offering an allusively fragmented melody over a rippling accompaniment, gazes nostalgically back at La bonne chanson's radiant mirage of happiness. And the airy tissue of the so-called Eighth Nocturne—in its slightness, an interloper in that series of major statements—closes the Pièces brèves with one of those minor miracles in which Fauré's art abounds, as a confidingly beguiling melody tolls through an aureole of runs and arpeggios and finally gives way to a simple, bell-like chime in which some passionately dreaming presentiment seems delicately suspended.

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