NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL'S GRAND ORGAN: SURVIVING THE FIRE AND BEING REFURBISHED TO PERFORM DURING THE 2024 OLYMPICS IN PARIS©

When fire ripped through the over 900-year old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019, the world literally looked on in horror.  

Much was lost which can never be replaced, including beautiful artisan-crafted stained glass windows, and it has taken more than one year to get rid of the toxic lead residue left by the fire. Traces of the hazardous lead dust have even shown up in honey produced by Parisian beehives since the fire.


Lead was a highly used building material in Paris during the time of the construction of Notre Dame, built in the 12th Century. The roof and the spire of the cathedral had several hundred tons of lead and while most melted during the fire, some flames reached temperatures high enough to aerosolize lead oxides.

  

Amazingly, the 8,000-pipe Grand Organ, which dates back to 1733, survived the fire which consumed the cathedral’s roof and toppled its spire; however, the blaze coated the instrument in the toxic lead dust that must now be painstakingly removed.

Although the Grand Organ itself didn’t burn, it also suffered additional damage from the record heatwave that followed the fire during last summer, and has been affected by other temperature variations to which it has been exposed since the Cathedral lost its roof.

Pipe by precious pipe, the Grand Organ that once thundered through Notre Dame Cathedral is being taken apart. The mammoth task of dismantling, cleaning and reassembling France’s largest musical instrument began on Monday, August 3, 2020 and is expected to last nearly four years.  

Experts have started removing the organ’s keyboards and will then take out its pipes through the end of this year, according to the reconstruction agency. The pieces will be placed in special containers inside the huge Cathedral, where the cleaning and restoration will take place.

Once restored, it will take six months just to tune the organ, according to the state agency overseeing Notre Dame’s restoration. 

Notre Dame Cathedral itself is currently closed to the public; however, France's President Emmanuel Macron hopes the Cathedral can reopen in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

The music of Notre Dame's Grand Organ, however, is scheduled to resound again through the much-loved medieval Paris monument on April 16, 2024, marking five years since the fire. 

The Cathedral's organist Johann Vexo is already dreaming of that day.

“It’s a very powerful organ, but with also a lot of poetry,” said Vexo, who was playing the organ during an evening Mass when the fire alarm sounded on April 15, 2019. “It’s just probably the most beautiful organ in the world.”

(Reference and Photo Sources: The Associated Press; Eric Mack, Contributing Writer (Science), Forbes Media; Cecelia Rodrigues, Senior Contributor (Arts), Forbes Media; Environmental Letters Jourmal)

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