• L'Accueil des Muses (1920)
• Sarabande for L'eventail de Jeanne (1927)
• Pipe (1934)
• Prelude to Le Quatorze de Juillet (1936)

Its most amazing passage comes at the work's conclusion: a long line arches upward, ascending to the extreme high register of the piano before a final close, now in the lowest register of the instrument. It is a fitting memorial to Debussy and the perfect synopsis of Roussel's own artistic greatness. [Robert Haskins]

Roussel's respect for Debussy is apparent in his writings, and his own offering, a piano piece entitled L'Accueil des Muses, is a moving and personal one. The slow curves of the melody and the intense harmonies betoken a grief whose poignancy is not concealed by its restraint of utterance. [Basil Deane]

This is a grave and solemn song, a stately and forlorn cortege of the Muses honoring the shade of the author of Pelleas. [Catalogue de l'oeuvre d'Albert Roussel]

L'accueil des Muses, written in 1920 to honor Debussy, is a concise work; four pages in the original Durand edition. It doesn't use brilliant sound, but instead evolves constantly using pianissimo, then piano, then an aborted crescendo. [Michelle Biget]

The ballet was first performed at Mme. Dubost's salon in 1927, with Ravel at the piano and her students performing. It was such a success that it was given a formal performance at the Paris Opera in 1929. Interestingly enough, this was the first performance of any of Darius Milhaud's music at the Opera, and he was so annoyed that he should debut with a trifling little Polka rather than one of his serious stage works that he boycotted the performance. The ballet is uneven, as one might expect, and it has no real story binding it together; yet it contains some excellent music. Ravel's Fanfare, for example, has won a place in the repertoire in a piano version.

Roussel excelled at writing powerful, emotionally charged slow movements, and so it is appropriate that his contribution to L'eventail de Jeanne was a slow Sarabande in the very middle of the work. The anguish found in some of his work is tempered here by lyricism. Indeed, this pensive, sometimes sad piece reminds me of some of the slow dances from Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev, the 20th century's master of tunefulness; the second subject is particularly noteworthy for its grace and beauty. All the themes are simple and dignified, gently spiced with typical counterpoint and dissonance.

Roussel also made an arrangement of the Sarabande for two pianos.

His Sarabande — a dark baroque dance in triple-time — provides with noble and tragic undertones the ballet's central slow-movement. [Edward Johnson]

Roussel's contribution was a prelude to the second act, which deals with events on the night preceding the assault. First we hear the conflicting emotions of the people in the Faubourge St. Antoine, followed by a threatening march. The threat dies away, leaving a silence of ominous foreboding.

Two things stand out in Le quatorze juillet. The first is the quality of the tone painting; this is the work of the Roussel of the ballets, not of strict neo-classicism. The second is the quality of the instrumentation, which is vivid and atmospheric.

This is one of Roussel's two strong contributions to modern concert band literature. The other is the spirited and beautiful A Glorious Day, written in 1932.

Short though it is, the Prelude is a remarkable piece of evocative writing. [Basil Deane]

If these five minutes of music do not have, in themselves, a large place in Roussel's total output, they nonetheless demonstrate his attachment to certain advanced ideas of which he made no mystery, but which have been singularly misrepresented. He was generous and full of sympathy for the disinherited and for their revolt in the face of social inequalities... but I am sure, although we rarely broached the subject, that he was ignorant of all politics. [Marc Pincherle]