[1] In the journal Tempo, percussionist Brian Holder writes, "The work presented the important notion that unpitched percussion (with piano and other pitched instruments coming in at the end) could stand alone as a serious form of concert music – a relatively unexplored concept at the time.

[4] Varèse also acknowledged the influence of the Italian Futurist artists Luigi Russolo and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in the composition of this work.

He was able to reinvent the role of concert percussion in a radical and refreshing manner, primarily by establishing pitch relationships between instruments of individually indeterminate pitch... its performance is a reenactment of a great rite of passage for what was then a fresh and previously unrecognized musical ensemble.

[11][12] The players for the recording included, in addition to the composer himself on the sirens, Carlos Salzedo on Chinese blocks, Paul Creston on anvils, Wallingford Riegger on guiro, Henry Cowell on piano, and William Schuman on the lion's roar.

[13] Sidney Finkelstein wrote in the EMS LP liner notes about the work: [Ionisation] is built on a most sensitive handling and contrast of different kinds of percussive sounds.