 However, while he also became much more widely known as a composer, running the Conservatoire left him with no more time for composition than when he was struggling to earn a living as an organist and piano teacher.As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend the two months until early October in a hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate on composition.His works from this period include his lyric opera, "Pénélope" (1913), and some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle "La chanson d'Ève", Op.