In the highly imaginative issue of La revue musicale of May 1926 dedicated to “La jeunesse de Claude Debussy” we find not only an article by Charles Koechlin entitled “Some Early Mélodies by Claude Debussy,” but also a musical supplement with four (at the time) unpublished mélodies selected by Henry Prunières from the manuscripts Debussy dedicated to Madame Vasnier: Pantomime, Clair de lune, Pierrot, and Apparition. Their publication marked the first time that works were made available from the period during which the composer was still calling himself Achille, as he did as a boy, and not yet “Claude.” Koechlin began his article by revealing that he had always been fond of the “youthful works of the great composers.” “[T]hey exhibit ideas that are fresh,” he continued, “and tender, naïve, and charming—qualities that the master [Debussy] was not always able to recapture in his later works.” A well-known critic of the day, Constantin Photiadès (1883–1949), commented on Prunières's discovery in an article for the Revue de Paris:

Here we learn that Photiadès was aware, already in 1926, of two Debussy manuscripts, most notably including that of Les elfes, whose very existence was completely unknown to modern Debussy scholars until recently, when they turned up in a private collection along with eight more song manuscripts from the pen of the master whom we now affectionately refer to as Claude de France.