Bernard Parmegiani (1927 to 2013) was a French acousmatic composer and a monument of experimental music. Trained first as a mime, he joined Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1959 and stayed until 1992, and his abstract electronic soundscapes have inspired countless musicians and composers since. De Natura Sonorum (1975), a treatise on sound in twelve movements, and La Création du Monde (1984), a cosmology in sound, still sound startlingly relevant and outclass much of the current scene in inventiveness and range; the Roissy airport jingle he wrote in 1971 was heard by millions who never knew his name.