International audience During the summer of 1932, André Schaeffner submitted to Curt Sachs a new classification of musical instruments that he had already published in the first issue of the «Bulletin du Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro» in January 1931. The correspondence between the two scholars, preserved at the archives of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, shows that Sachs endorsed his system and that he sought to submit Schaeffner’s work to Hornbostel. Schaeffner’s proposal was then published in the «Revue Musicale» and later developed as Appendix to his seminal monograph Origine des instruments de musique (1936).This contribution presents the genetic and characteristics of André Schaeffner’s classification, evaluates its influence on French ethnomusicologists, its heritage and its impact in public collections (their storage and indexing systems), in academic training and in publications on organology.