Plainsong
2019
While music has provided some of the most wonderful experiences of my life, I’ve always considered plainsong, or plainchant or Gregorian chant, one big yawn. Who would have thought that it would provide for me one of the most important moments of my musical life?
About 15 years ago, my wife, Pat, her sisters Vicky and Merry, and I were in Paris for a few days after having finished a barge trip in Burgundy. At Notre Dame Cathedral, we had noticed a small poster announcing a chamber concert of plainsong to be held that evening. Merry wasn’t interested in going.
When asking about tickets, we were told that no more tickets were available. We mentioned our disappointment to our tour guide. She went back into the cathedral and came out with three tickets, saying that the number of tickets was limited to the number of people who could sit in the choir – probably about sixty.
With several hours to kill, we went to a nearby café where we had a chance encounter with one of my friends and a professional colleague, David Bishop and his wife from Evanston, Illinois where he was the Librarian at Northwestern University. After the excitement had calmed down, they told of a chamber concert that was going to be held soon at the Sainte-Chapelle. The chapel was erected by Louis IX, king of France, to house the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True Cross. These relics of the Passion are exhibited only on Good Friday.
The upper chapel, where the concert was held, is resplendent in its Gothic architecture. Supported by slender piers, the vaulted ceiling seems to float above magnificent stained-glass windows.
We were able to get tickets and enjoyed a splendid string quartet concert.
Surely the day so far would be about as much as ones’ senses could absorb, but no, the best was about to begin.
The Notre Dame Cathedral was a short walk away. We entered through the massive main doors. Except for the altar, the cathedral was lit only by the sun shining through the stained-glass windows, a kaleidoscope of color, mainly in brilliant reds and blues. It provided just enough light for us to find our way to our seats in the choir. Silence. It was so silent that one could almost feel it. Nothing moved except for the colored lights as they moved along the walls caused by the setting sun. We somehow manage to breathe – without breathing.
Gradually the thousands of colored prisms, coloring all within their way, were turned off as the sun set, leaving us in almost total darkness.
Soon, from the main entrance, came a distant sound of plainchant. The faint sound increased in volume as it moved toward the altar which was perpendicular to the choir. It took a few minutes for the fifteen singing men, dressed in black, to pass us seated in the choir, after which they took their places at the altar where they stood in muted light.
Thus began an hour of magical beauty. A pure sound, without vibrato, they sang mostly in unison but sometimes adding a glorious depth by dividing into parts. Most of the time, I dwelt in darkness through closed eyelids – seeing without looking, hearing without listening and “being” without awareness. It was if one were suspended without support. Could this be a feeling of transcending? It was a glimpse of what heaven must be like.
At the end, as the sound diminished into nothingness, ushers guided us soundlessly back through the dark cathedral.
Knowing that I would never again experience anything so wonderful, I tried to remember the moment before having to enter again into the realm of reality.