Charles Tomlinson Griffes was part of the early generation of American composers who received their musical higher education in Germany. But the course of his musical development was reoriented to a new direction after he heard a performance of Ravel's Jeux d'eau (Fountains). This work with its brilliance, its mysterious and new harmonic language, and its unsettled harmonic ambiguity suited Griffes well. The French Impressionists' tendency to write brief descriptive movements rather than music of German formal structures also was closer to Griffes' natural inclinations. (It would not be until the end of his sadly shortened life—he died of complications from the disastrous influenza epidemic of 1918-1920—that he turned back to academic forms with stunning originality in his Piano Sonata.)

If one must seek, for description's sake, a comparison to the Three Tone Pictures in the works of the French Impressionist masters, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Debussy's Images for piano (particularly Reflets dans l'eau, Cloches à travers les feuilles, and Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût) seem to come closest. In common with many of these six movements by the French masters, Griffes uses a hypnotic ostinato rhythm, obsessively tied to one note, as a leading harmonic and structure device. In common with Debussy, Griffes was drawn to the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and uses epigrams from Poe as headings for two of the Three Tone Poems. The important thing is that Griffes' music, despite their being strongly influenced by Debussy and Ravel at this point, is fully capable of withstanding any sort of comparison with the works it is modeled after.

The first movement, "The Lake at Evening," was inspired by a line from Yeats, "lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore." It is the prettiest and most purely melodic of the Tone Pictures, with a tender melodic line that still retains the feeling of German Romanticism, creating a charming effect against the French harmonies and the disturbing repeated note.

"The Vale of Dreams" is more thoroughly tied to French Impressionism in its style, though there is a streak of Scriabin's harmonies involved here, also. The music seems to descend sadly to the place of dreams, depicted in the harmonic stillness that prevails in the last measures.

"The Night Wind," the final movement, is not a strong storm, but is a portrait of a gusty wind that seems to come from some mystic source. When its chromatic scurrying abates and the music rests on a shimmering dissonant chord, it is as though the wind has brought with it the breath of a mystic realm.

Griffes revised "The Night Wind" in 1915, when the suite became the first of his piano music to be published. He also arranged it for woodwinds and harp in the same year, and in 1919 made an orchestration for piano, wind quintet, and string quintet or string ensemble.

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