The year 1890 witnessed the first flowering of French composer Claude Debussy's piano music in print, as the Deux Arabesques, the four-hand Petite Suite and, most significantly, the Suite bergamasque all found their way into published editions. Debussy was considerably less satisfied when Paris-based publisher Eugène Fromont issued his piano piece Rêverie from an old manuscript that had been lying about for some time. "I very much regret your decision to publish Rêverie," Debussy testily wrote to Fromont. "I wrote it in a hurry years ago and purely for commercial purposes. It is a work of no significance and, frankly, I consider it absolutely no good."

Debussy's low opinion of Rêverie has not prevented it from taking pride of place among the very best known of his piano works. Debussy's original manuscript is no longer extant, and in terms of dating, that of the first published edition, as reflected above, is generally accepted. But in actuality, Rêverie was composed sometime between 1880 and 1884. As such, it is a milestone, as it represents the earliest known instance of Debussy working in the "impressionistic" musical vocabulary that eventually became his trademark.

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