Mark Swed, in a review for the Los Angeles Times, wrote: "The score has a processional character and an Asian flavor. Percussion tolls, with gongs favored. Surprisingly, Boulez toys with repetition, which was all the rage in New York at the time but not by Boulez, who was known for favoring ever-changing complexity in his music. "Rituel" became the best of both worlds — intricate, of course, but also a real and unforgettably poignant ritual." 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."