Jean-Jacques Nattiez was born in France in 1945 and naturalized Canadian in 1975. He is a specialist in both music and musicology, as well as linguistics and modern lyrics, and is considered one of the pioneers and greatest exponents of musical semiology. He has taught courses in more than twenty countries and was professor of musicology at the University of Montreal (1972-2013), an institution of which he is now professor emeritus. His numerous books include the now classic Fondements d'une sémiologie de la musique (1975), and others such as: Tétralogies (1983), De la sémiologie à la musique (1987), Wagner androgyne (1990), Le combat de Chronos et d'Orphée (1993), La musique, la recherche et la vie (1999) and La musique, les images et les mots (2009), as well as works on music from the Inuit communities (Canada), Ainu (Japan) and Baganda (Uganda). He was editor of the writings of Pierre Boulez and of his correspondence with John Cage. He also directed an encyclopedia in five volumes: Musiques. Une Encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle (2001-2007). Several of his works have been translated into English, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, and Romanian. His first book translated into Spanish was Proust musician (Gourmet Musical Ediciones, 2009).