Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis were published in their original form for voice and piano in 1897, with a dedication to the writer André Gide. The texts were those of the well-known prose poems by Pierre Louÿs. Notable above all else for their atmosphere of delicate sensuality and beguiling mild eroticism, the three chansons were first performed in public at a Société Nationale de Musique concert on March 17, 1900, when Debussy himself accompanied Blanche Marot at the piano.

Later in the early fall of 1900, Fernand Samuel, the artistic director of the Paris Théâtre des Variétés, an institution that pioneered much that was new in the world of the contemporary stage, decided to approach Pierre Louÿs with an idea which had occurred to him. Samuel proposed that the Chansons de Bilitis might be amenable to an alternative setting, and an entirely novel style of presentation. He discussed with Louÿs his ideas for possibly reworking the cycle, in such a way that it could be mimed to a recitation if provided with suitable stage settings and a new musical arrangement. Debussy was asked to remodel and enlarge the score appropriately, which he agreed to do only with a certain degree of understandable reluctance. Nevertheless, the composer provided a reworking of the original Chansons de Bilitis settings (for voice and piano), employing a novel instrumentation requiring pairs of harps and flutes with a single celesta and with a reciter now intoning the words.

In the event, however, this revised instrumental version of the Chansons de Bilitis was finally presented at an alternative Parisian venue, the Salle des Fêtes of Le Journal on June 7, 1901. The hastily remodelled score gave Debussy little satisfaction, and nor were his efforts received with any great enthusiasm by the press, with the result that the score was put aside and forgotten, only to be exhumed again in 1914. Eager to provide his publisher with new material, Debussy transformed some of the music, and used it again, arguably to far greater advantage, in his Six Epigraphes Antiques, for piano duet or piano solo. The conductor Ernest Ansermet also subsequently produced a version for full orchestra of Debussy's Epigraphes, which is occasionally performed.

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