NOTRE DAME DE PARIS IS BURNING

Music has been part of Notre Dame’s history since its foundation. Some of the earliest known European composers, working in Paris around 1160 to 1250, wrote music for the liturgy each week even as the great cathedral was being built around them. Collectively these composers are known as the Notre Dame School. Their names are mostly forgotten. Through a 13th-century English scholar, known as Anonymous IV, we know of the two most important: Léonin and Pérotin.

Their lasting significance was to write down and develop western musical techniques which had previously only been extemporised. Their polyphonic motets (written for more than once voice) replaced the single line of Gregorian chant, common up to that point. The Magnus Liber Organi (“great organum book”), a collection of Notre Dame works, is one of the greatest single achievements in medieval art, a cornerstone of European music for the next three centuries. Léonin, according to Anonymous IV, made the collection, Pérotin later revised it. The American minimalist Steve Reich paid tribute to Pérotin in his vocal and electronics work Proverb.

Another globally important strand of musical life for Notre Dame is the historic organ, central to the flowering of French organ music. The current instrument, spectacular in size and symphonic sound, was originally built by the leading French organ maker Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1868. It has survived two world wars and was substantially improved in 1963 and again in 1990. Played on five keyboards and pedals, it has nearly 8,000 pipes and an advanced computer system.

Several French composers have held the position of organist at Notre Dame including Louis Vierne who collapsed and died at the organ console after a recital to 3,000 people. The most idiosyncratic, quirky and brilliant in modern times was Pierre Cochereau, improviser, composer, pedagogue and one of the greatest organists of the 20th century.

Fiona Maddocks

it has nearly 8,000 stops and an advanced computer system.

They're very finely attuned to accents, like Brits. They may respond in heavily-accented English if you make some tiny mistake, but they're not usually jerks about it.