Notre-Dame’s significant musical legacy unscathed by fire

When Pope Alexander III laid the foundation stone for the Notre-Dame of Paris in 1163, the idea was to build a large cathedral for the city in a place where a number of small churches had been in existence. The various religious communities of the city, especially those who became affiliated with the new structure, had active musicians whose work became associated with the cathedral. The clergy of these religious communities counted among their ranks many accomplished musicians, cantors and composers. Their activity left a lasting and influential musical legacy, which subsequently became known as the school of Notre-Dame. In this third installment of my series on cultural heritage and catastrophe, I will shine a brief spotlight on the musical heritage of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which had a golden era in the 12th and 13th centuries thanks to the Notre-Dame school.

The word “school” here refers to a constellation of musical expertise and output that developed in a particular place during a certain span of time. What characterizes the Notre-Dame school are particular developments in European music that marked a distinct phase in the history of Western music. These developments were achieved by a number of musicians whose activity was associated with the cathedral and its surrounding area.

One of the legacies of the Notre-Dame school within European music was a shift in what is widely known today as the process of musical composition. Church music — the religious music of Europe at the time — was also the “serious” music of the time. It was the music of scholars and scholarship, as it was associated with literacy (which was primarily the business of religious men). Church music was also associated with knowledge, which was exclusive to religious establishments in medieval Europe and to the educational institutions associated with them. In Paris, a university was starting to take shape thanks to support from the cathedral and its surrounding. Religious music was also the music that was written down, as music notation was primarily a practice of religious circles so far as we know. As the 12th century neared its end, notation had only been in existence for a handful of centuries in Europe, so it too was undergoing significant changes.

One of the legacies of the Notre-Dame school within European music was a shift in what is widely known today as the process of musical composition 

Tala Jarjour

Music associated with the Notre-Dame school moved gradually from being a process of concurrent performance and composition, where only one line of the music heard was actually on the page, to being fully written down in multiple lines. This shift took place when musicians started notating all the parts to be played or sung, thus changing the practice of their time from part written out and part improvised to fully written down. In earlier practice, the cantor or organist would be looking at one notated musical line on the page (one voice) and singing or playing additional voices, according to a certain set of rules for how the different voices worked together in the polyphonic music of the time. Polyphony (a term which indicates music consisting of multiple voices that progress independently from one another yet sound together) was a dominant style in European music of the era, and in Paris it consisted of between two and five voices.

Thanks to influential practices at Notre-Dame, master musicians started writing out all the voices, making them available on the page for other musicians to read and perform. This has allowed master musicians to establish a new form of authority over musical detail. It has also reduced improvisational liberty and introduced a new understanding of musical composition: Fixed, fully-written-out works containing multiple voices.

The new practice of writing out all the music gradually allowed master musicians to flex existing rules of how the different voices related to one another. It has also allowed them to introduce new rules to polyphonic music, and in some cases to change them altogether. The result was that new musical styles evolved, and those were put to paper thanks to notation and the availability of resources and scribes. Once written, these works were possible to copy, collect and transfer to other places, where they influenced contemporary practice in other centers of musical excellence. The impact of the Notre-Dame school resonated across Europe during its heyday in the 12th and 13th centuries, and is still recognized today through the lasting legacy of its famous composers, such as Leoninus and Perotinus, who are thought to have worked there.

The flourishing of musical and liturgical output in Paris and its cathedral went hand-in-hand with political stability. Historians mark the reign of Philip Augustus (between 1180 and 1223) as a particularly rich era. While the king of France was busy with a number of conquests and external wars (not least among which was his participation in the Crusades, having fought in Palestine), his reign was one of internal peace and prosperity, especially in the cities. The freedoms Philip II gave to cathedral clergy to govern themselves with some autonomy, and the carefully calculated relations of reciprocal benefit he fostered with city merchants and inhabitants, especially the protections afforded to and received from Paris, allowed him to limit the threatening power of nobility and ensured a good deal of internal stability. This policy was the impetus for academic prosperity in the city’s university and cathedral alike. It also paved the way for further prosperity in Paris during the 13th century, before the Black Death, internal unrest and wars brought stagnation to intellectual and musical output.

Today, Paris is known globally through its famous monuments; to many, they are treasures of a material nature and have invaluable significance. When the city’s cathedral was engulfed by flames, musicians around the world expressed an added sense of loss. While their fears for the organ and other musical objects held inside the building were allayed as news emerged of their safety, musicians felt a sense of loss even though the music that has come to be associated with Notre-Dame remained out in the world, unscathed. This is but another instance of the fragility we associate with cultural heritage, even when it remains unharmed in the face of catastrophe.

 

• Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (OUP, 2018). She is currently Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale.