PARIS — The composer Joseph Bertolozzi, bearing a meditative look, stood with his feet apart in front of a door frame inside the Eiffel Tower. Then, 187 feet above the Champ de Mars garden, he pulled a latex mallet from his tool bag and hit the frame hard, and then softer, with agility and rhythm.

“That one was beautiful!” said Paul Kozel, a sound engineer, who recorded the dull thuds.

Mr. Bertolozzi, who lives in Beacon, N.Y., is in Paris harvesting sounds for what he calls a “public art installation,” a musical project that has taken him, Mr. Kozel and a team of seven to one of the most visited monuments in the world.

His mission is to “play the Eiffel Tower” by striking its surfaces, collecting sounds through a microphone and using them as samples for an hourlong composition called “Tower Music.” He eventually hopes for a live, on-site performance of the work to celebrate the tower’s 125th anniversary next year.

“I’m exhilarated to be here,” Mr. Bertolozzi said, just before striking a wall with a sheepskin-padded log hanging from a leather strap. “I’ve been planning this for so long.”