You were a gifted child, beginning your studies at the Conservatoire on the Rue de Madrid in Paris at the age of nine. There, you were taught by the legendary Nadia Boulanger. What was her influence on you?
Michel Legrand. – I was in her class for seven years. We did several classes at the same time. With Nadia Boulanger I did harmony, counterpoint and fugue, conducting, and piano accompaniment – it was a fantastic time for me. I learnt about rigour and discipline, and when I finally finished at the age of twenty, I was ready for anything. I had such a solid technique that when today I conduct or when I'm playing, I know exactly what I want. I don't play well, but I play all instruments, which means no one can pull one over me, and I can show all the violinists the fingering. I wanted to be a classical musician and a concert performer, but of course I had to earn my living. Thanks to various contacts I ended up working with Henri Salvador, then with Maurice Chevalier – and I became a pianist for French variété singers.

It can't always have been fun, working with Jacqueline François, for example…
That's not true! She sang very well and wasn't afraid of anything. I did some pretty over-the-top orchestrations for her, and the more dramatic they were, the more Jacqueline liked it, and she'd ask me to make it even more dramatic. On the other hand, with Salvador, it had to be more or less the same all the time. With Dario Moreno, I had a great time. He was a fantastic musician, very bold.

Before working for the cinema, you were one of the most important musical arrangers for French chanson in the fifties and sixties. Did you enjoy that period?
It was a very enjoyable time. I had great fun doing some pretty wild arrangements. I remember sessions where we'd be recording in mono with sixty musicians and a single microphone which hung from the ceiling.

Was writing for cinema just as positive an experience?
What I liked about the movies was the variety. One day you'd be doing jazz, the next a romantic melody, then the next a classical score, then some Elizabethan music, then baroque… that's why you have to know how to play everything. As for myself, I have just as good an understanding of classical music as jazz. If you ask me to compose something like Mozart, I compose Mozart. And if you want me to play some Erroll Garner, I can rustle that up for you, too!

Recently, a young fellow composer Bruno Coulais told us that what he doesn't like is when the media says the soundtrack "invades" the movie. 
In my day, the stupid critics used to say: "A good soundtrack is one you don't hear." If you can't hear the music, what's the point of putting it there in the first place? The music should make its presence felt, and you do that by composing something with real quality. If it's dull, you don't need it. A movie soundtrack is like a second dialogue.

Do you have any regrets about your movie career?
What you can't do with movie music is experiment. The musician always arrives at the end of the film, when it's already shot and sometimes edited as well. At best, you have six weeks to compose and record before the music is edited into the film. At that stage, you can't afford to get it wrong. The film script might have taken months or years, the shoot might have gone on for any number of weeks, the editing process can be drawn out, but the music must always be right at the first attempt. I would have liked just once to have been able to record something and try again if it didn't work out. 

You were never allowed to do this?
No, never. Starting a soundtrack again is unheard of. On the other hand, what has happened to me is that I've composed music a director didn't like and he refused it. Then, he got it done at high speed by someone else. All movie composers have had an experience like that!

What is your biggest constraint as a soundtrack composer?
You see the film with the director, you decide which sequences need music and then you realise that here, you only have one minute and thirty-seven seconds. But you need three or four minutes to properly express your musical idea. Put simply, the job of the soundtrack composer is to say in one minute thirty-seven seconds what should have been said in four minutes.

What do you think of the new technology used for composing – computers and sequencers?
I have all that at home to do whatever I like without the help of musicians. But for actual composing, it's no good. People who use this stuff to compose, or believe they are composing, are stupid. Music is a language and you can't compose it unless you know the language. The machines give you nothing. For rock, it's perfect: the machines can do it by themselves. But the moment it's not rock, all you hear is some crappy chord on a synthesiser and a melody played with one finger. If you don't speak Chinese, don't go and live in China! If you don't understand music, don't write music!