sonic studies by campanologists, musicologists and musicians, technical analyses of the vaults and towers, the development of a sound modelling program, documents spanning 700 years, a bellfounding committee and contest, 7 the French Ministry of Culture’s involvement and 2,5 million euros. 8 If the endeavour deviates from bell making traditions, it also poses the question of how the reproduction of an ‘authentic’ soundscape can ever be possible, even with identically cast bells. * Obviously a full set of new acoustic competitors have appeared since la Prise de la Bastille – roaring buses, buzzing scooters, ringing cellphones – which means Emmanuel and its new accompaniers’ soundscape will not be objectively heard in the same way. But even if it could be, the messages it carries would be different. The city walls have been demolished, curfews abandoned, the diversity of routines accepted, and literacy, clocks, press and the internet have usurped the bells’ chimes as markers of time, power, community and forewarning. Today these new/old bells can only resonate as the sounds of heritage; something popular these days for the sense of reassuring historical authenticity it conveys. 9 In reality the authenticity of the bells’ soundscape (like that of anything) is unattainable because their tolls will resonate in a Parisian collective identity that doesn’t make sense of the world in the same way as those living in the city in the eighteenth century. And yet, even if none of us understand ‘it’s Easter’ or ‘time to pray’, from the entrancing beats of cathedral’s future chimes (available on-line as a modelled audio) emerges a nostalgic feeling for a time when bells were masters — a sense of loss retrieved that erases the inherent impossibility of the project’s premise. j
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1 ‘De nouvelles cloches pour Notre-Dame de Paris’ by Notre Dame de Paris 2013 http://www.notredamedeparis2013.com/les-grands-projets/nouvelle- sonnerie-de-cloches/#fn-24-2 2 In France, over Easter bells are silent and are only rung again on Easter Monday when it is told the bells flew over the gardens during the night hiding Easter chocolate eggs and candy. 3 Alain Corbin assessed that approximately 80 per cent of French church bells were melted by the 1800s. Corbin, Alain. Village Bells. Sound and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside . New York, NY: 1998, first published 1994. 4 David Garrioch, ‘Sounds of the city: the soundscape of the early modern European towns’, Urban History , 30, 1 (2003): 5-25. 5 In 1867, twelve more bells were installed in the spire and the transept of the cathedral. 6 Maïa de la Baume, ‘A Melodic Emblem Falls Out of Tune’, The New York Times , October 18th 2011. 7 The chosen melders are Cornille-Havard (Villedieu-les-Poêles, France) for the eight northern tower bells, and Royal Eijsbouts (Asten, Holland) for Marie, the small bourdon of the south tower. 8 Edouard Launet, ‘Notre-Dame baptise ses cloches’, Libération , February 13th 2012. 9 Richard Handler and William Saxton, ‘Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative, and the Quest for Authenticity in Living History’, Cultural Anthropology (Aug. 1988): 242-60.
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