Though no one but Fauré could have written it, not the least curious thing about the Impromptu for harp is how atypical of Fauré it seems, despite the expansive length at which its slender materials are worked. Another curious matter is that Fauré transcribed it for piano as an Impromptu for piano No. 6, Op. 86bis. The boldly strummed chords of the opening (a positively carillon-like effect on the piano) are a kind of bardic call to order harking back to the world of Chopin's Ballades—though without sounding like Chopin, either—to a legendary demesne luminous with the stuff of dreams. For the initial heraldic motif is met immediately by a dreamingly distracted meno mosso melody in plucked gossamer as part of an ever-expanding dialogue moving from the instrument's throaty lower register to its aerial highest, dissolving in glistening runs and glittering arpeggios to return with greater vehemence answered by more lambent fantasy. Cumulative tension dissipates suddenly in a conventional coda.

Composed in July 1904 for a harp concours at the Conservatoire, it was heard there for the first time on the 25th of that month in a performance by Mlle Charlotte Landrin—soon to marry Jacques Lerolle, Chausson's brother-in-law.

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