Gaubert eventually joined the staff of the Paris Conservatory and this piece is highly typical of what Conservatory composers would write through the next several decades: music flirting with contemporary trends but remaining essentially conservative in order to showcase the lyrical as well as technical abilities of the players. The Nocturne settles into the piano with gauzy impressionistic harmonies. The flute arrives with a gentle melody that initially seems like foursquare salon material, but within a few measures it wanders off chromatically and takes on the sensuous character associated with flute music by the slightly older Ravel and Debussy. The Nocturne, monothematic and rhapsodic, ends with a little flute flourish and is succeeded by the longer Allegro Scherzando section. Here the style reverts to nineteenth century Romanticism, with its playful will-o'-the-wisp opening melody. Contrasting material arrives in the more languorous middle section, but this is interrupted before it can develop by the main scherzo tune. The broader theme makes one more grand, if again curtailed appearance before the chirping main theme carries the piece through its final bars.

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