Henri Pousseur was born in Malmédy on June 23,1929. He studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and subsequently, he encountered Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio and devoted himself to avant-garde research. He attended the summer courses in Darmstadt, the Contemporary Music Festival in Donaueschingen and he worked at the electronic music studios in Köln and in Milano. He was a teacher of composition at the Music Academy in Basel. In 1970, he created in Liège the Centre for Musical Research of Wallonia. He was appointed as Director of the Academy of Music in Liège in 1975 and he remained in office until 1988. As the spiritual heir of Webern, Henri Pousseur endeavoured by applying the techniques and the principles of the aleatoric and through combining electronics with traditional instruments - to bring about a renewal of the phenomenon of sound. From among a vast catalogue, we could quote "Symphonie à 15 solistes" (1958), "Les Éphémérides d'Icare" (1970), "Couleurs croisées" (1967) for orchestra as well as the opera "Votre Faust" (1961-68) created in co-operation with the writer Michel Butor.