Itaru Sekiguchi first heard the Great Organ of the Paris Notre Dame cathedral when he was 10. The “infernal sound” changed his life forever.
“It was a bit of a culture shock,” he said.
Today the Japanese, 53, is one of a handful of specialists entrusted with tuning and voicing the fabled instrument as Notre Dame prepares to reopen on Dec. 7 after a devastating fire in 2019.
Photo: AFP
The near 300-year-old colossus was miraculously spared by the flames.
Sekiguchi moved to France in his 20s to become an organ builder and restorer, dreaming of a chance to work on the “voice” of the masterpiece of Gothic architecture.
“I wanted to come to France because that’s where it’s happening, but when I told my family, they thought I was a bit out of my depth,” said Sekiguchi, who hails from Sendai in northeastern Japan, speaking in fluent French.
In 2018, he became the cathedral’s official organ builder, responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of France’s largest musical instrument, which is the height of a four-story building.
The voice of the monument since 1733, the organ has 8,000 pipes and a sound when in full flight that its players describe as truly symphonic.
“It was my dream. It gave me a chance to get to know the instrument a little better,” said Sekiguchi, who has lived in the central Correze department for a quarter of a century.
For three weeks a month, Sekiguchi handled maintenance operations, including tuning the organ, adapting to the constraints of one of the most visited places in France.
“Time is very limited,” he said. “You have to work at night because otherwise it disturbs the tourists, but also because you need absolute silence for the tuning.”
That dream was short-lived.
A year later, a fire ravaged the cathedral, and Sekiguchi lost his job.
He found solace in knowing that the organ was spared by the flames and was doused with relatively little water as firefighters fought to save the historic structure.
“I was afraid for the organ because during the night we didn’t know what was going on, we had contradictory information, it was a nightmare,” he said.
He is convinced that any major damage would have been irreversible.
“Today, we wouldn’t be able to do the same thing,” he said.
Although it was not directly affected by the fire, the instrument still sustained damage.
Lead residue seeped into the organ and the instrument was further weakened by scorching temperatures during a summer heat wave in 2019.
In December 2020, the organ was dismantled and sent for expert restoration. Three organ-building workshops were involved in the restoration work.
After the work was completed, Sekiguchi and other specialists began to tune and voice the instrument, again working at night.
The question on everyone’s lips is, how will the Great Organ sound after being restored and when the cathedral opens its doors again?
“It’s very difficult to give the right tone. A pipe can speak in 1,000 different ways,” said organ builder Olivier Chevron, who invited Sekiguchi to work on the project.
The task is so specific that the organ builders make their own tools, some of which have no name, and rely on their know-how and subjectivity.
“It’s difficult to describe the sound of a great organ,” said organ builder Bertrand Cattiaux, who hired Sekiguchi in the early 2000s.
“For me, it reflects the sound color of the cathedral,” said Cattiaux, who was in charge of the maintenance of the Great Organ at Notre Dame for many years. “It was a warm instrument, not tense or aggressive.”
Sekiguchi has also been summoning his memories to help voice the instrument.
Despite the mammoth task, he has relished the opportunity to help restore the French icon.
“It’s a lot of things, a lot of honor, but also a lot of work and responsibility,” he said. “It’s just incredible.”
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS