The scholar Roger Shattuck once proposed that Satie’s unique sense of musical beat, and his appreciation of “the possibility of variation within repetition,” could be traced to this “endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/tchaikovsky_beethoven_mahler_they_all_loved_taking_long_daily_walks.html