Writing for AllMusic, James Harley stated: "the music is... rich in tone and detail. The ritualized unfolding of the refrains and verses provides a framework for a complex, dynamic musical universe. 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. The combination of logic and spontaneity produces a powerful musical experience, a worthy tribute to a valued friend lost too soon." 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. Never has Mr. Boulez’s lifelong study of the precious immediacy of sound, its resistance to permanence, been more poignant."