In 1976, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned twelve composers (Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutosławski) to write pieces celebrating the 70th birthday of conductor and patron Paul Sacher.
[1][2] The complete cycle was not performed in its entirety until 9 May 2011, at a concert by cellist František Brikcius at the Convent of Saint Agnes, part of the National Gallery Prague, Czech Republic.
[7] Boulez biographer Dominique Jameux noted the work's "clearly perceptible design,"[8] while musicologist Susan Bradshaw described it as "a birthday telegram written in an easily decipherable musical code that relates everything to the single cell of an initiating series drawn from the letters of its dedicatee's name.
[14] An additional version for solo viola and tape was prepared in 2016; it was premiered on 23 January 2021 at a concert in Paris, France, with soloist Adrien La Marca.
"[18] Reviewing a 1999 performance at Carnegie Hall, Bernard Holland called Messagesquisse "a charmer, exploiting the sound of a single instrument multiplied seven times and doing it with great delicacy."