The work was originally conceived as the second movement of the Second Symphony. However, it quickly outgrew this purpose, and so Roussel published it separately. He explained that:

"I conceive of this piece as a sort of little symphony comprising within itself the various movements: allegro, scherzo, andante, with the slow movement at its center."

This trick of dividing a piece into "internal movements" is one that Roussel used more than once; for example, in the Sonatine for piano and the Sinfonietta for string orchestra. Although Fête de printemps shows some structural similarities with the shorter scherzo that eventually became the second movement of the symphony, the overall effect is bright rather than dark, fresh and enchanting rather than gloomy.

It was with the orchestral Pour une fête de printemps in 1921 that Roussel took his stand unequivocally with the younger composers. The opening chord, a simultaneous statement of the tonalities of A major and E flat major, could be paralleled in the music of Richard Strauss, but its uncompromising appearance at the very beginning of a work not otherwise notably revolutionary showed the direction in which Roussel's idiom was developing. [Martin Cooper]

Other than [the opening chord], the work has no great distinction, being far too near the basis of the "Poeme de la foret." [Norman Demuth]

Closely related to the Second Symphony, also, is the symphonic poem "Pour une fête de printemps (one of the composer's most elaborate and fascinating works). [David Cox]

As a whole, the short tone-poem is one of Roussel's most happy inspirations, not at all gloomy or problematic like the Symphony is not which it was originally thought to fit, but on the contrary fresh, bracing, bright and full of fantasy, a true picture of nature, expressing a refined joy of life. [Harry Halbreich]

The principle of development is the same as that of the symphony: expansion and variation of short rhythmic motives. The orchestral texture is involved, and the harmonic idiom astringent. Roussel's ability to integrate extreme dissonance into a tonal framework is illustrated at the beginning of the work.... In performance the composer's technical skill does not obtrude, and the work has all the freshness and exhilaration implied by its title. [Basil Deane]