In Jazz dans la nuit we have Roussel's lone foray into an area that was quite popular with French composers in the years between the wars: jazz. He uses jazz in very much the same way that Ravel used waltz in La Valse; to paint an ironic and vivid portrait of the weaknesses and foibles of his age. Jazz dans la nuit is a masterpiece of the same quality as La Valse, though on a much smaller scale.

Roussel's borrowings were almost always of a subtle sort. Thus in Evocations, the Hindu influence is muted while even in Padmavati it is not dominant. And so it is with Jazz dans la nuit. The jazz influence in this dark song is subtle — extremely subtle when compared to works such as Milhaud's Le boeuf sur la toit or Le creation du monde.

Roussel is more concerned with creating the atmosphere of people listening to jazz than with recreating jazz itself. He exceled at atmosphere, and within a few introductory bars the piano establishes a film-noir setting for a voyeuristic glimpse into a late-night jazz concert in a park. Weary smiles, surprising kisses in shadowy, colluding bushes. A woman drops a handkerchief... intentionally? Better hurry to pick it up for her, while saxophones sob a long lament.... Subtle, as I said, and tongue-in-cheek, but one of Roussel's very best melodies.

Pierre Vellones arranged the accompaniment of this song for a "jazz ensemble" consisting of trumpets, trombone, saxophones, banjo, double bass, and piano. Such an arrangement was obviously tailored to maximize the jazz effect. This might be marvelous or it might ruin the music's subtlety; I'd love to hear this arrangement to make up my mind. However, Roussel's original piano version is the one most often heard.

Jazz dans la nuit reflects the composer's fascination with jazz (one shared by Ravel at the same period), admittedly in a rather watered-down form. [Dom Angelico Surchamp]

Jazz dans la nuit, which could have been a mere picture postcard captioned with negro music, becomes in Roussel's hands an unsettling evocation of the futile and artificial atmosphere of the inter-war period. Certainly no member of les Six could have at this time (1928) dealt with this text with such economy of means. [Laurent Barthel]

The particular technical problem posed, namely, the absorption of the highly stylised idom of jazz into the composer's personal language, is brilliantly solved.... Far from being a pastiche or parody, Jazz dans la nuit is an individual and sardonic, although not unsympathetic, comment on its subject. [Basil Deane]

In "Jazz dan la Nuit" Roussel's sense of parody found an outlet. He himself regarded this song as a bit of fun, and in it he condenses the elements of the Jazz of the 'twenties. [Norman Demuth]

An experiment in a frankly modernistic manner is exemplified by his Jazz dans la nuit for Voice and Piano. [Nicholas Slonimsky]