With his second set of Images for piano, Debussy creates new music from musical elements identified with the music of Java performed in Paris during the World's Fair of 1900. Lockspeiser, citing Robert Godet's remarks, singles out Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut, among others, as a composition influenced by Javanese music, but only in the 1980s, have musicologists begun to speculate on the ramifications of a directly borrowed chord from Louis Benedictus’ transcription Gamelan Goedjin that opens the piece. Pursuing documentation of the traces of Javanese influence on Et la lune embraces an interesting historical problem, but it fails to address some fundamental questions: Why did Debussy compose a second piece influenced by the music of Java? What is the relationship, concerning Javanese influence, between Pagodes and Et la lune? Do glimpses of Java in the work contribute to its critical estimation?

The answer to the first question is self-evident: Debussy's abiding interest in and fascination with the arts of the Far East make his exploration of the music of the East an essential aspect of his artistic vision. More specifically, novel musical ideas gleaned from his absorption of Java in Pagodes—exotic scales, interval symmetries within exotic scales, harmonies derived from exotic scales, melodic contours and rhythms—continued to fire his imagination. But while Pagodes gravitates toward the Benedictus transcriptions of 1889, Et la lune is the offspring of the 1900 transcriptions. The critical distinction that sets off his second machine chinoise as a formidable exponent of Eastern music is best described by Louis Laloy when he calls attention to its simple texture.

In an article appearing in 1910, Laloy, an expert on Chinese music and Debussy's first biographer writes: