Biographer Dominique Jameux wrote that the piece has "obvious audience appeal", and that it represented a desire to establish "immediate, almost physical contact with the public".

[1] Author Jonathan Goldman wrote that, of Boulez's works, Rituel is the one that "most evokes... the sound worlds of non-Western musical ensembles, be they Indonesian, African or South American.

[4] Following the premiere, Boulez revised the score, removing optional, "open" features due to concerns regarding the ability of a large ensemble to react in a coordinated way to unpredictable situations.

[5] The musical material of Rituel was derived from ...explosante-fixe..., a two-page tribute to Igor Stravinsky, described by Goldman as "a kind of open-ended composition kit", that Boulez composed for a 1972 issue of the journal Tempo.

[9] Though Boulez separated the groups of players as far apart on the stage as possible, David Robertson, conducting the Orchestre National de Lyon at Carnegie Hall in 2003, placed some in the auditorium's balconies.

"[16]) The responses (odd-numbered sections) are marked by dense homophonic writing, with the instrumental groups producing chords that are triggered by the conductor at different times.

[18]) The verses (even-numbered sections) are more linear, and feature passages of varying length that can be cued by the conductor so as to sound all at once or with staggered entrances, with the result being a heterophonic texture.

[24][25] (These are the same pitches used in the row of ...explosante-fixe....[26]) This set appears in melodic form in the verses, where it is gradually developed, transposed, reordered, and extended, and its inversion governs the harmony of the refrains.

Heard in concert, the spatial distribution of the eight ensembles clarifies the heterophonic nature of the music, enabling the layers of simultaneously unfolding material to be perceived both as distinct entities and as components of the whole.

"[31] In a New York Times article following Boulez's death, Zachary Woolfe called Rituel a "shimmering memorial... funeral music, as surely as any by Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner or Mahler.

"[33] Alex Ross called Rituel "the most sensuously appealing score of Boulez’s career" and commented: "plangent oboe solos, rasping choirs of brass, and intricate splatterings of percussion rang out in ever-changing sonic perspectives, in a musical approximation of a Calder mobile.