Pulling Out All the Stops for Notre Dame

 

 Left: a view of the Grand Organ with the famous rose window behind.

 Right: the Notre Dame organist Vincent Dubois on April 7.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.

Johan Sebastian Bach -- professional organist

 I've had a love/hate relationship with pipe organs through the years. They are magnificent musical instruments, designed to create a sense of awe as their sublime music fills the worship space in which they reside. Apparently the infrasound of low bass notes creates a frequency lower than is audible to the human ear and causes peoples to experience a sense of spirituality. 

In four of the six pastoral charges I served through the years there were sizeable pipe organs meant to do just this, and the musicians who played them were, for the most part, up to the challenge. I have vivid memories of worship services and concerts blessed by the enveloping strains of those organs.

And...they were also a pain in the ass, to put it bluntly. They can be temperamental, influenced by temperature and humidity. We replaced an organ in one congregation and the debate over electronic or pipe nearly started a civil war. In another the beast stopped working and we discovered that mice had been munching on the wiring. Another spent $300,000 to restore the impressive musical instrument, yet struggled to find a new organist because so few musicians are training to play pope organs anymore.

 

Philippe Lefebvre at the console of the Grand Organ in 2013

I suppose it's a case of "can't live with 'em..." I was pleased to read that the organ at Notre Dame Cathedral survived the devastating fire two weeks ago. There had been an article immediately following the fire asking whether a recording made of a recital in January would be the last for this instrument which survived the French Revolution and two world wars.This organ is arguably a global treasure, as is the cathedral. A recent article in the New York Times offers:

The Grand Organ was one of Notre-Dame’s most important objects, with five keyboards and almost 8,000 pipes. It traces its origins to the 1400s, though the current organ is mainly from 1868 and had been added to and improved many times. It was “the most sumptuous example of France’s greatest contribution to the organ world,” wrote John Rockwell in The New York Times in 1992, after the instrument had completed a 30-month, multimillion-dollar restoration.

There are three organists for Notre Dame and they are thrilled that the organ will be cleaned, tuned and perhaps played well before the cathedral is fully restored, although one wonders whether this project will take much longer than the five years suggested. And would playing the organ prematurely be detrimental to the damaged structure? 

We'll find out. To God be the glory...