One year after composing Five Wedding Songs, in late April and early May 1935, Mycielski wrote some more songs. This time the composer reached for the writings of the Roman poet and philosopher Petronius (ca AD 27–66). Exploring various texts of culture was something that Nadia Boulanger encouraged her students to do; she most likely inspired Mycielski to write the cycle, which he dedicated to Marcele de Manziarly, at that time a fellow student in the composition course and with time – a friend of many years. Mycielski decided to set to music the long song “Varietas occurrit satietati” [The joy of change] as well as two fragments only attributed to the poet. He added a French translation by Charles Héguin de Guerle to the manuscript. 

Following the images evoked by the poetic text (an Epicurean-hedonistic theme, illnesses of the soul, delight in the changeability of the seasons), Mycielski gave its successive fragments different musical settings. In addition to melodeclamation we will find here cries of outrage; the broad-breathed melodic line will be transformed into chromatic passages based on intervallic leaps using a sharp rhythmic pattern, while the ascetic, openwork texture of the piano part will be juxtaposed with piercing sounds highlighting dissonant seconds, tritones and sevenths. 

The Petronius songs are good, vocal progress in comparison with the wedding songs, though the second one is a bit hard.

Wrote the composer in a letter to his mother on 15 June 1935, aware of the transformations occurring in his musical language.