During the hour or so we spent together, Pierre Schaeffer struck me as a bitter, disillusioned, and relentlessly objective man.

He was disillusioned with the world around him and he was bitter that his fame was based on an achievement he more or less regarded as a by-product: musique concrète had been but an adventure. What really counted for him was a treatise, a summary of his research into the phenomenon of noise—and the book had not been translated into English, so that it could not exert the influence that was its due.

On the other hand, Schaeffer considered that his real calling was fiction writing. His oeuvre as a writer, however, appears to have been quite slim: some essays, biographies, short novels and plays. Perhaps that is why the international encyclopedias of literature that I have consulted take no notice of him. Making an effort to take an objective look at his life, one may conclude that he may well have been disappointed. Nevertheless, he is considered today one of the most influential experimental, electro-acoustic musicians, the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies. His collective endeavors are considered milestones in the histories of electronic and experimental music.

In answer to your first question I can briefly say that for me, Bach has been the only composer of any interest, ever since I was twelve years old: it was at that age that I first came across his music. No one else exists for me. As for your second question: noise has been the subject of my research. I did not examine it as a musician; I attempted to find out what was noise all about, what was its interrelationship with music. On a more general level, the relationship between music and all other aural phenomena. And finally: I am quite certain that I do not repeat myself, since I gave up composition some twelve years ago.

Now let us take a look at the three questions once again.

I.

My father was a violinist, my mother was a singer. I have heard music ever since I was a baby. As a child, I played the cello and the piano and was quite successful in solfeggio as well.