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Cécile Wajsbrot's Conversations avec le maître, the first volume of a series called ‘Haute mer’, is a novel about the experience of listening to music. Through conversations between a composer and an anonymous young woman, it conveys crucial aspects of musical listening and of its verbal expression. This article examines the functioning of dialogue between the two characters ; moreover, it studies the relationship between creation and reception, as expressed in the novel. It also examines what is at stake in this dialogue: the power of art in its relation to reality, to History. How may music become the echo of contemporary catastrophes ? The article offers a close reading of the novel’s descriptions of listening to music : what literary techniques enable the author to put it into words ?