It was in his capacity as conductor and founder-director of the new music ensemble 2E2M that I first made contact with Paul Méfano, in the vain hope that he would program some Hungarian music. Talking to him as a composer was more productive, as indicated by our interview below.

Méfano studied with Messiaen directly and also at one remove, his teachers having included Boulez and Stockhausen, in addition to Henri Pousseur. On a grant from the Harkness Foundation, he spent two years in the United States (1966–68) subsequently living in Berlin for a year.

Attending the Summer Courses in Darmstadt was a logical consequence of this background. Recognition of his achievement arrived when he was invited to teach at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he was to exchange later to become director of the Versaille Conservatoire (1996).

I.

I have also had crucial experiences of a relevant nature. The first one occurred at the Paris Conservatoire. One of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti was performed, led by a very inadequate conductor. I was not yet a musician at the time, but however poor the interpretation may have been, the music exerted an extraordinary influence. It moved me to tears and I decided to become a musician. I was sixteen and resolved to devote my time to musical studies after finishing secondary school two years later. My goal was to become a composer.

The fact that I strongly responded to music was proved by an earlier experience as well. I was born in Iraq, in the town of Basra (I was the first Frenchman to have been born there). There lived a milk-woman in our neighborhood. She would balance a huge vessel on her head and offer her goods chanting loudly. The curious melody which she repeated many times fascinated me and in later years I attempted to conjure it up in my own works.

Hearing [Boulez’s] Pli selon pi for the first time in 1960 was of equally crucial significance. It represented a fundamentally new musical idiom compared to those I had come across until then and it stirred me up no end. On the whole, however, non-European folk music has been more important than European music.