Histoire d’une oreille invites us on an unprecedented journey through twentieth century popular music, from the Beatles to Stevie Wonder, from Michel Delpech to Chico Buarque and Louis Armstrong. You’ll hear the music like you never did before, in a way that lets you get as close as possible to the mystery that makes a melody magical or a harmony surprising.

The book is enhanced with a large number of audio excerpts. It aims to pinpoint musical sensations – which have rarely been explored – as precisely as possible. Why do I enjoy one particular tune more than another? How does music kindle this or that feeling or emotion? And how can we transcribe those sensations into an intelligible language?

Far from being a simple anthology of sensations, this book reconstitutes a veritable musical-sensation factory in which the experiences and emotions gradually complement and respond to each other like a vast set of building blocks.

Composed as a series of brief chapters, each of which is a story of listening, chance discoveries thanks to random encounters, concerts and memories, François Pachet’s book is also – and this is not the least of its charms – a discreet autobiography, in which music is inseparable from memory: the notes coming from the car radio becoming permanently linked to the sweltering heat of summer in Greece or the boredom of a long road trip.

Composed as a series of brief chapters, each of which is a story of listening, chance discoveries thanks to random encounters, concerts and memories, François Pachet’s book is also – and this is not the least of its charms – a discreet autobiography, in which music is inseparable from memory: the notes coming from the car radio becoming permanently linked to the sweltering heat of summer in Greece or the boredom of a long road trip.