In three and a half years, between the summer of 1955 and the end of 1959, you had written three works which, in terms of duration, represent half your mature output: Séquence, Le temps restitué and …au delà du hasard. In the next six years you achieved nothing but two beginnings, for Discours and the Concerto.

To the obvious question why, you left traces of several answers. For one thing, you were busy with other enterprises.

In the summer of 1960 you were putting together an application to the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, a government body which supported academic work outside academic institutions. As you put it in a letter to Pierre Souvtchinsky, you were doing this ‘to be finished with a more than tiresome material existence and to safeguard La mort de Virgile’. At this same time Souvtchinsky was also giving you his support and contacts in the effort to get …au delà du hasard performed in Munich. You were asking for his intervention again and for Messiaen's; you already had on your side the pianist Yvette Grimaud, herself attached to the CNRS, and the always diligent Hodeir. Etienne Souriau was another who was consistently helpful to you in your dealings with the CNRS.

On 1 January 1961 you duly took up your appointment as probationary researcher, rising to a full position on 1 October 1962. This was not just a sinecure. Your topic was the music of Debussy, on whom you had signed a contract with Editions du Seuil for a book back in 1956. Since you were busy then with creative work, you probably wrote most of the book during your first months with the CNRS, ready for it to be published in 1962, the year of Debussy’s centenary. In a letter of 20 November 1961 to Aldo Bruzzichelli, you wrote that you were finishing the text and would then concentrate on orchestrating Le temps restitué.