[1] Boulez recalled that he immediately felt that he "had a pretty direct relationship with the poetry of Cummings," but "did not feel sufficiently well acquainted with the English language to tackle one of his poems.
[4] The poem is typical of Cummings's work in that it employs an unusual layout on the page, with a highly personal use of word fragmentation and parentheses.
"[5] The 1970 version requires two conductors who at times function somewhat independently, and, like a number of other compositions of this period, it employs aleatoric techniques in sections.
[14] According to Boulez, prior to the premiere in Ulm, the concert organizers contacted him and requested the title of the work so that they could print the programs in advance.
"[15] In a 1977 review, Arnold Whittall described the form of the work as "fluid yet precise, unpredictable and therefore intensely dramatic," and commented: "No other work of Boulez's, not even the early cantata Le Soleil des eaux, seems to me to demonstrate so clearly his personal synthesis and transformation of stylistic elements that derive from both Webern and Debussy.