It is scored for a solo soprano and orchestra and uses the texts of three sonnets of French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé and single lines from two of his other poems.

"[3] Boulez uses the five Mallarmé poems in chronological order, beginning with the early "Don du poème" of 1865 in the first movement and continuing to the late "Tombeau" of 1897 in the last.

Rather, the soprano is an integral part of the instrumental fabric and only rarely are specific words or phrases 'illustrated' musically in the traditional manner.

In both cases, Boulez removed some of the flexibility he had previously allowed the performers in determining the order in which to play the sections of these movements.

[7] The symmetrical structure of the work is readily apparent not only in its dynamics, but in the use of fragments in the opening and closing sections and the disposition of instruments.

For example, "The customary string section is not used for lyrical, cantabile melodies, but rather for sounds such as tremolos 'snapped' pizzicati and other quasi-percussive effects."

"[1] John Rockwell recognized both the work's innovations and its sources: "as evident as the novelty of these pieces are their debts to other composers and other cultures–the Expressionist tensions of Schoenberg, the exuberant racket of Chinese percussion, above all the piercing aviary of Messiaen.

"[10] The published score of the original version was printed with some sections in black, green, blue, violet and red to illustrate, according to a Pierpont Morgan Library exhibition catalog, "the different degrees of rigor with which its various parts are to be realized in performance".

[14] The first New York performance of all five movements occurred in 1978 in Carnegie Hall by the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble led by Arthur Weisberg.

He wrote: No-one who has come to terms with Messiaen will find this music difficult: for the most part it is thought out in great Brucknerian instrumental layers, and in place of thematic treatment there are rhymes, rhythmic puns and some simple if un-Mallarméan gesturings.

Mr. Boulez's works serve his listeners most usefully by isolating them momentarily from the human feelings that an "Erlkönig", let alone a "Winterreise", can force to the surface.

The music remains Boulez's most extended engagement with the modernist aesthetic‚ especially in the concluding "Tombeau"‚ which so determinedly resists that very continuity and coherent cumulation to which it seems to aspire".

It described the composition as "a work which sums up the composer's vision of art and life in the years before he found his way to a viable electroacoustic technique and a more stable view of musical structure.

Mallarmé's words ... allow our imaginations to create our own experiences and associations.... Boulez takes us by the hand and leads us into this astonishingly beautiful garden and we are free to walk around it in any direction we choose.... And this work is emotionally very strong, because it's great music!

In 1983, comparing the first two recordings, Paul Griffiths noted the latter's markedly longer playing times and wrote: "Boulez in 1969 appears to have been excited with a work that was still new; in 1981 he was looking back on it with affection, certainly, but perhaps too with a faint sense of regret.