Jean-Jacques Sempé, the artist behind this week’s “Different Scales,” finds inspiration in music, especially jazz. “Cartoons are like jazz: their goal is only to suggest,” he adds. “I know it runs counter to everything else these days, where the mandate is to inflate the slightest thing, but in my drawings I strive for the beauty of ellipsis that I find in Debussy or in Count Basie.”

See below for a selection of covers by Jean-Jacques Sempé that celebrate the pleasure of music.