The bells of Notre Dame

A few weekends ago (...as most of my columns begin, I am aware), I went with several friends to a free organ concert at Notre Dame cathedral. The very idea of it wowed me, even before the music started -- as I sat at the end of a neat row of chairs looking up at the high, vaulted ceiling, the concurrence of the place, time and event threatened to take my breath away. It was my first time visiting Notre Dame, after all, and the idea of the cumulative history inhabiting the place -- the fact that the dust on the floor, the smudges on the windows, even the scratches in the wooden lectern could have existed at any other point in Paris' long and dramatic history as a city -- was practically too much to bear. I was on the edge of my seat long before the first note rang through the lofty space.

The organist was apparently well-renowned, having come from the Czech Republic or some other eastern European country to perform that night. I don't think I've ever heard music quite like what he played, and I don't think I ever will again. I felt as if I was a bit part in a movie, part of some long dramatic zoom-in shot beginning at the door in the very back and flying across the flagstones and over the pews, stopping finally on the grand altar at the front of the building. The organist played a piece he composed himself, entitled "Apocalypsis Symphony," which gave me chills to hear; its cacophony of loud discordant tones and delicate ascending melodies gave the impression of battles being fought on a celestial plane. I am on edge even thinking about it now, several weeks later.

The way the sound of the organ filled the space of the cathedral is something I can only describe in terms of terror and awe, such was its intensity and volume. I kept expecting to see Quasimodo swinging on the bell-cord, while Frollo raved about hellfire and damnation on the earth below.

When the concert ended, there was a moment of sublime silence, the final notes still ringing in the air, before the thunderous applause that inevitably followed. As a classical musician myself, that moment of silence is my favorite part of any concert; it means the audience is releasing a collective breath, hanging on to the last few measures before they disappear from memory. I love this moment because that's how you can tell your music moved people; if they have to process it for a moment at the end, you know you've done a good job.

So, the silence hung in the air, and the applause started -- and lasted, and lasted and lasted. The audience clapped so loud and for so long that it became almost uncomfortable: Would the organist play us an encore, or would he leave it at that, confident in the knowledge that he had brought a whole cathedral's worth of people to their feet?

I turned to one of my friends, hands and arms aching from the interminable applause.

"Is he done, do you think?" I asked. "Or will he play something else?"

He turned to me, smiling and clapping as well.

"Oh," he said, a wry grin on his face. "I think he'll be Bach."

The organist was, in fact, finished playing, and I still haven't quite forgiven my friend for subjecting me to that horrible pun.