Stravinsky's Trois pièces faciles (Three Easy Pieces) for piano four hands were composed in Clarens, Switzerland, in 1914 - 1915. This was the height of Stravinsky's Russian nationalist period, the period following the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, during which he was composing the first version of Les noces. The Three Easy Pieces, however, are more in the style of international light music like the later waltz and tango of L'histoire du soldat than of the more Russian works of this period like the Pribaoutki and Four Russian Peasant Songs. The titles of the Three Easy Pieces reveal their light-music origins and aspirations: "March," "Waltz," and "Polka."

Each of the Three Pieces has an extremely simple left-hand part for each pianist but with a more complicated right hand. In this, they resemble Stravinsky's other piano-duet and two-piano pieces of the period, the Valse des fleurs (Waltz of the Flowers) from 1914 and the Five Easy Pieces from 1916 - 1917. All of these were didactic pieces composed for his young children to play.

Almost immediately upon completion of the Three Easy Pieces, Stravinsky began adapting them for other instruments or ensembles. The Polka was transcribed in 1915 for cimbalom and then for cimbalom and small ensemble. That same year he transcribed the March for 12 instruments and the Waltz for seven instruments. Of all these arrangements, only the cimbalom solo version of the Polka was published. In 1921, the Three Easy Pieces became the first three movements of Stravinsky's Suite No. 2 for small orchestra, a piece written for a Paris music hall—thereby fulfilling the work's original light-music aspirations.

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