French composer Pierre Boulez led the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the premiere performance of his Répons in 1981. The Southwest German Radio Orchestra commissioned the work for the Donaueschingen Music Festival, and the composer dedicated it to his friend, composer Alfred Schlee. In a tribute to conductor Paul Sacher, Boulez apparently used the letters of the great philanthropist's last name throughout the piece as compositional material. Répons was Boulez's first major work after his notorious term as conductor of the New York Philharmonic. The title refers to the soloist vs. choir aspect of the Gregorian chant responsorial. Here, Boulez exploits the spatial implications created by the give and take between the individual and the group. Made up of ten separate sections, Répons is thoroughly groundbreaking and innovative, with particularly remarkable scoring and use of the performance space. The audience surrounds a twenty-four-piece chamber orchestra and conductor, as a group of six solo instrumentalists (piano, xylophone/glockenspiel, vibraphone, harp, piano/synthesizer, and Hungarian cimbalom) surround them. In "real time," the sounds of the instrumental soloists are manipulated and transformed electronically, reflecting Boulez's long-held desire to successfully integrate live instruments and electronic technology. The result is a work of subtle energy, complexity, and mystery. While primarily atonal, there is a sense of thematic unity enhanced by great attention to tonal color. Typically, Boulez wrote several different versions of this piece, with the original running about seventeen minutes which was later expanded to about 45 minutes for the 1984 version.

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