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Were the Organ Pieces at Notre Dame’s
Reopening Masonic?
The re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral last December 7 brought together the world’s elite in this now-restored monument to the Faith and Civilization.
The cathedral shone with splendor as the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris choir and orchestra intoned notes of somewhat-grandiose music. The emotion and wonder were palpable, the pomp & pageantry – albeit sabotaged by Progressivism – still inspired admiration, and a sense of marvel and excitement could be felt … until the organ “re-awakening”.
As the organ started in on eerie and cacophonous notes, one could see on the faces of those present expressions of bewilderment, turmoil and upset.
On an occasion of such importance, why was terrible music played? Is there a deeper meaning to the cacophony? Since my education was in music, the topic piqued my interest. I hope to offer some possible answers to these questions in this article.
Background
In an article published several days before the ceremony, news outlet France 24 explained that the event would be presided over by Paris’ Archbishop Laurent Ulrich, with more than 50 heads of state in attendance. The clergy also had full representation: “Nearly 170 Bishops from France and other countries will join the celebration, as well as priests from all 106 parishes in the Paris Archdiocese. … The Archbishop will also symbolically reawaken Notre-Dame's thunderous grand organ.”
Expert craftsman and restorationists were hired to restore the cathedral, which had suffered from the tragic fire in 2019. (1) But the cathedral itself was not the only thing needing restoration – the organ suffered damage as well. “The fire that melted the cathedral's lead roofing coated the huge instrument in toxic dust,” reported France 24. “Its 8,000 pipes, ranging in size from that of a pen to over 10 meters (33 feet) tall, have been painstakingly disassembled, cleaned and retuned.”
Music has always expressed the imponderable and mysterious aspects of our Faith, with the organ – rightfully called the king of musical instruments – playing an important role alongside the vocal music of the sacred liturgy. (2) Thus, it comes as no surprise to know that the now-restored organ would play a central role in Notre Dame’s re-opening.
Who & what of the organ re-awakening
A video of the full organ “re-awakening” can be found here. The four performing organists were Olivier Latry, Vincent Dubois, Thierry Escaich and Thibault Fajoles. (3)
The ceremony consisted of eight chanted invocations of Arch. Ulrich in French to the organ, followed by eight improvisations by the four organists. “Improvisations” here means that they made up their own music on-the-spot.
Most of them were modern & non-traditional. So, after listening to some of it, many rightfully wondered: what happened?
Organ improvisation, modern music
Improvisation is an important aspect of organ playing, used for the transitional and main moments of the liturgy. French organists have their own style of improvisation, but the practice went downhill in the 20th century (examples here and here).
At the turn of the 20th century, concurrent with Modernism’s infiltration into the Church, there was a radical departure from traditional harmony, in which there was a hierarchy:
Each key is based on one note, and all the other notes play a greater or lesser importance in relation to that note, which reigns as
“king” of the key. I believe this movement toward atonality was a consequence of the Revolution in the Church and society, which gradually turned man away from God and towards himself.
Just as Western man began to stray from his center (God), Western music also began to stray from its center (tonality), focusing less on sacrality and more on dazzling, complex technique, inventing novelties that were increasingly extravagant. This eventually led to the abandonment of tonality among influential avant-garde circles like the Second Viennese School, causing an egalitarian atonality in sound.
Modern French organ composers sink into ugliness
French organ music was also influenced by this musical modernism. The downward trajectory becomes clear when we compare modern composers with those of the past. The latter include Baroque-era Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) (here, here and here), or even Theodore Dubois (1837-1924), who, although romantic, was still mostly tonal (here).
Listening to a few samples of modern French organ composers shows the gradual straying from traditional tonality and rhythm, and the constant obsession with increasingly complex technique and novelty (like fast repeated notes played without interruption for prolonged periods, heard in the samples below).
This can help to explain what the four organists played on December 7; since they were most likely trained on these modern composers, their works would make up part of the repertoire from which they probably derived their improvisations.
Samples: Widor, Vierne, Mulet, Dupré, Langlais, Cochereau.
Perhaps the worst and most revolutionary of all modern French organ composers is Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). He created his own version of tonality (which he called “modes of limited transposition”) that is actually closer to atonality. Messiaen’s music has also been called theosophical – that is, related to that branch of occultism
(here).
The “Messiaenic” influence on December 7 seems quite clear: his whole-tone scales can be heard , but also his second mode (tone, semitone, tone, semitone, tone) was played by Thierry Eschaich here. Messiaen’s influence is even more probable when considering that Olivier Latry (one of the four organists) recorded an album of Messiaen’s complete organ works (here and here).
Although these composers cannot technically be called atonal, they certainly pushed tonality to its limits, especially Messiaen, and are part of the general trend toward 20th-century atonality. They likely influenced the four organists, which thus explains where they got their mostly garbage-sounding improvisations (except for the two in the middle by Dubois and Fajoles here and here).
Esotericism in music
Is it possible there are esoteric symbols in modern music, particularly in the music played on December 7? Since modern art has esoteric aspects (here and here), would it not also make sense that modern music is influenced by esotericism? Although the following suggestions are not conclusive, I raise them as hypotheses.
The aforementioned whole tone scale, not native to Western music, is a hexatonic (6-note) scale said to be esoteric. Composers did not really begin to use the whole tone scale until the 19th century. Claude Debussy, who was said to promote Rosicrucianism and also to be the
Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, used it extensively
(here). (4)
Famous jazz musician John Coltrane created a circle based on the whole tone scale, and his final connecting lines form a pentagram, which is used in Satanism, Gnosis, Esotericism, Theosophy and Masonry.
This scale, which is also the first of Messiaen’s “modes of limited transposition”, was used often in the December 7 ceremony: Latry played it here and here, Vincent Dubois played it here (the stepwise notes in the background) and here, and it can also be heard in the background played by Thibault Fajoles (here) and Escaich here.
Atonality has also been considered esoteric by some. In his La Prophetie Musicale, Albert Roustit comments on the atonality of Schonberg in modern music: “Hence [there is] a very clear tendency towards a drying out of art, a drying out that will no longer seduce crowds of listeners, but which will give the new [atonal] works an esoteric character that only the initiated will be able to understand. Intellectualism prevails over sensitivity." (p. 161)
Roustit continues: “As for the dodecaphonic [12-tone] ‘rules’, according to Schonberg's doctrine, it is certain that they were established following this process of extreme ‘concentration’ or ‘stripping,’ which consists of not repeating a sound before the twelve sounds of the series are heard. They would therefore be both speculation and the codification of a new language. The result is an esoteric aspect of this music which has now become a realization of sound mathematics with strict rules based on arbitrary data: a purely cerebral art whose intellectualism is formally opposed to the instinctive feeling of the great mass.” (p. 169)
Although Roustit may not mean that atonality is esoteric in the strict sense (related to or evoking occult magical rituals), it really is esoteric when considering that its egalitarian principles are shared by gnosis.
Tritones, considered the Devil’s interval in the Middle Ages, (5) were also said to have been used on December 7.
L’edifice.net, a website that pretends to be the largest online library of Masonic information, gave this Masonic interpretation of the tritone:
“Between F and B, there are three tones, hence the name of this interval as tritone. This ratio is considered in music as a harbinger of the devil; the fathers of the Church had forbidden it. So it was decided as soon as it appeared to lower F to E and raise B to C (in C major). And the first step E F is compared to the door of Men while the second step B C is assimilated to the door of the Gods. The first takes us from 4 to 3 which is the passage from Earth to Heaven and the second from 7 to 8 which is the access to transcendence.”
I did not analyze all the performances minutely, but during the Sixth Invocation, at the 10:30-12:17 mark, a two-note line was played, with 5 pairs of 2 notes played twice; the first "measure" outlines two diminished seventh chords, with a tritone in the middle of each. They are not immediately audible, but "hidden" in the music:
Another tritone is found at 12:39, in Eschaich’s stepwise melody (D to A-flat).
It is true that tritones became prevalent starting in the Baroque era. However, in this ceremony, they seem to take on special significance when considered in context with everything else. (6)
Cacophony’s masonic symbolism
The chords and intervals analyzed above are considered dissonant - that is, cacophonous, not-consonant.
In fact, the movement from cacophony to harmony is considered important in the masonic ritual. An article on Music and Freemasonry from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France can perhaps explain the cacophony in the organ improvisations. I give two excerpts, with my commentary:
Consonance is heard in the organ ceremony
While listening to the invocations of the organ in Notre Dame ceremony, it is clear that, despite the chaos occurring throughout, they all end on a consonant chord, usually major, but sometimes minor. My analysis:
Some hypotheses:
The letter G is apparently very important to Masonry, symbolizing the Great Architect, God, but also glory, grandeur, geometry. See these articles
here, here and
here. G, A and D also happen to feature in the acronym for Masonry’s supreme being, or GADLU – Grand Architecte de l’Univers (Great Architect of the Universe).
Again: these are not conclusive proofs, but merely curious hypotheses that could explain the emphasis on G, A and D, which seems quite intentional considering the number of times they are repeated (G is repeated twice, D six times, with the note A featuring prominently in the key of D).
Symbolism in the main organist
When raising the possibility of masonic symbolism in the organ music played at Notre Dame’s reopening, some might dismiss it as mere conspiracy theory. However, this possibility becomes more convincing when considering that Olivier Latry, perhaps the most famous of the four organists, has appeared in at least one photograph where he makes a strange gesture with his arms while covering one eye. Sources found on X, here, here, and elsewhere here.
What is this gesture? It has been interpreted by some to be the Eye of Horus or Luminous Delta, a symbol Masonry uses often. See here and here. Note how he is covering one eye and making a two triangles with his arms.
Conclusion
After considering all these things, one question arises: Did the organ ceremony at Notre Dame’s reopening on December 7 have an occult masonic symbology, meant to display Masonry’s power and perhaps also to subconsciously initiate listeners? Nothing can be stated with certainty, but the ensemble of evidence presented here suggests an affirmative answer.
Assuming that what was played were actual improvisations and not previously-composed pieces that were meticulously rehearsed and memorized (which is a possibility), my suspicion is that the organists could have been told to begin and end on a certain key and were given a certain style or composer’s vocabulary from which they were to improvise, but with a strong emphasis on modern composers and a preference for whole tones, tritones, and chaotic tonality (atonality) ending in consonance.
Expressions of confusion
As the organ started in on eerie and cacophonous notes, one could see on the faces of those present expressions of bewilderment, turmoil and upset.
On an occasion of such importance, why was terrible music played? Is there a deeper meaning to the cacophony? Since my education was in music, the topic piqued my interest. I hope to offer some possible answers to these questions in this article.
Background
In an article published several days before the ceremony, news outlet France 24 explained that the event would be presided over by Paris’ Archbishop Laurent Ulrich, with more than 50 heads of state in attendance. The clergy also had full representation: “Nearly 170 Bishops from France and other countries will join the celebration, as well as priests from all 106 parishes in the Paris Archdiocese. … The Archbishop will also symbolically reawaken Notre-Dame's thunderous grand organ.”
Expert craftsman and restorationists were hired to restore the cathedral, which had suffered from the tragic fire in 2019. (1) But the cathedral itself was not the only thing needing restoration – the organ suffered damage as well. “The fire that melted the cathedral's lead roofing coated the huge instrument in toxic dust,” reported France 24. “Its 8,000 pipes, ranging in size from that of a pen to over 10 meters (33 feet) tall, have been painstakingly disassembled, cleaned and retuned.”
Music has always expressed the imponderable and mysterious aspects of our Faith, with the organ – rightfully called the king of musical instruments – playing an important role alongside the vocal music of the sacred liturgy. (2) Thus, it comes as no surprise to know that the now-restored organ would play a central role in Notre Dame’s re-opening.
Who & what of the organ re-awakening
A video of the full organ “re-awakening” can be found here. The four performing organists were Olivier Latry, Vincent Dubois, Thierry Escaich and Thibault Fajoles. (3)
At left: view of the organists from the choir loft;
at right, Arch. Ulrich sings the invocations to the organ
The ceremony consisted of eight chanted invocations of Arch. Ulrich in French to the organ, followed by eight improvisations by the four organists. “Improvisations” here means that they made up their own music on-the-spot.
Most of them were modern & non-traditional. So, after listening to some of it, many rightfully wondered: what happened?
Organ improvisation, modern music
Improvisation is an important aspect of organ playing, used for the transitional and main moments of the liturgy. French organists have their own style of improvisation, but the practice went downhill in the 20th century (examples here and here).
Influenced by the Revolution, some composers went off the rails of tonality, like Schonberg
Just as Western man began to stray from his center (God), Western music also began to stray from its center (tonality), focusing less on sacrality and more on dazzling, complex technique, inventing novelties that were increasingly extravagant. This eventually led to the abandonment of tonality among influential avant-garde circles like the Second Viennese School, causing an egalitarian atonality in sound.
Modern French organ composers sink into ugliness
French organ music was also influenced by this musical modernism. The downward trajectory becomes clear when we compare modern composers with those of the past. The latter include Baroque-era Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) (here, here and here), or even Theodore Dubois (1837-1924), who, although romantic, was still mostly tonal (here).
Listening to a few samples of modern French organ composers shows the gradual straying from traditional tonality and rhythm, and the constant obsession with increasingly complex technique and novelty (like fast repeated notes played without interruption for prolonged periods, heard in the samples below).
This can help to explain what the four organists played on December 7; since they were most likely trained on these modern composers, their works would make up part of the repertoire from which they probably derived their improvisations.
Samples: Widor, Vierne, Mulet, Dupré, Langlais, Cochereau.
The flamboyant revolutionary Olivier Messiaen
The “Messiaenic” influence on December 7 seems quite clear: his whole-tone scales can be heard , but also his second mode (tone, semitone, tone, semitone, tone) was played by Thierry Eschaich here. Messiaen’s influence is even more probable when considering that Olivier Latry (one of the four organists) recorded an album of Messiaen’s complete organ works (here and here).
Although these composers cannot technically be called atonal, they certainly pushed tonality to its limits, especially Messiaen, and are part of the general trend toward 20th-century atonality. They likely influenced the four organists, which thus explains where they got their mostly garbage-sounding improvisations (except for the two in the middle by Dubois and Fajoles here and here).
Esotericism in music
Is it possible there are esoteric symbols in modern music, particularly in the music played on December 7? Since modern art has esoteric aspects (here and here), would it not also make sense that modern music is influenced by esotericism? Although the following suggestions are not conclusive, I raise them as hypotheses.
Claude Debussy: an occult & malicious gaze
Famous jazz musician John Coltrane created a circle based on the whole tone scale, and his final connecting lines form a pentagram, which is used in Satanism, Gnosis, Esotericism, Theosophy and Masonry.
This scale, which is also the first of Messiaen’s “modes of limited transposition”, was used often in the December 7 ceremony: Latry played it here and here, Vincent Dubois played it here (the stepwise notes in the background) and here, and it can also be heard in the background played by Thibault Fajoles (here) and Escaich here.
Atonality has also been considered esoteric by some. In his La Prophetie Musicale, Albert Roustit comments on the atonality of Schonberg in modern music: “Hence [there is] a very clear tendency towards a drying out of art, a drying out that will no longer seduce crowds of listeners, but which will give the new [atonal] works an esoteric character that only the initiated will be able to understand. Intellectualism prevails over sensitivity." (p. 161)
Roustit continues: “As for the dodecaphonic [12-tone] ‘rules’, according to Schonberg's doctrine, it is certain that they were established following this process of extreme ‘concentration’ or ‘stripping,’ which consists of not repeating a sound before the twelve sounds of the series are heard. They would therefore be both speculation and the codification of a new language. The result is an esoteric aspect of this music which has now become a realization of sound mathematics with strict rules based on arbitrary data: a purely cerebral art whose intellectualism is formally opposed to the instinctive feeling of the great mass.” (p. 169)
Although Roustit may not mean that atonality is esoteric in the strict sense (related to or evoking occult magical rituals), it really is esoteric when considering that its egalitarian principles are shared by gnosis.
The Coltrane circle with pentagram at left;
the whole tone scale at right, said to be esoteric, since it has no tonal center
Tritones, considered the Devil’s interval in the Middle Ages, (5) were also said to have been used on December 7.
L’edifice.net, a website that pretends to be the largest online library of Masonic information, gave this Masonic interpretation of the tritone:
“Between F and B, there are three tones, hence the name of this interval as tritone. This ratio is considered in music as a harbinger of the devil; the fathers of the Church had forbidden it. So it was decided as soon as it appeared to lower F to E and raise B to C (in C major). And the first step E F is compared to the door of Men while the second step B C is assimilated to the door of the Gods. The first takes us from 4 to 3 which is the passage from Earth to Heaven and the second from 7 to 8 which is the access to transcendence.”
I did not analyze all the performances minutely, but during the Sixth Invocation, at the 10:30-12:17 mark, a two-note line was played, with 5 pairs of 2 notes played twice; the first "measure" outlines two diminished seventh chords, with a tritone in the middle of each. They are not immediately audible, but "hidden" in the music:
Another tritone is found at 12:39, in Eschaich’s stepwise melody (D to A-flat).
It is true that tritones became prevalent starting in the Baroque era. However, in this ceremony, they seem to take on special significance when considered in context with everything else. (6)
Cacophony’s masonic symbolism
The chords and intervals analyzed above are considered dissonant - that is, cacophonous, not-consonant.
In fact, the movement from cacophony to harmony is considered important in the masonic ritual. An article on Music and Freemasonry from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France can perhaps explain the cacophony in the organ improvisations. I give two excerpts, with my commentary:
- "Before the strictly musical moments, the ritual of a performance is above all marked by musical forms without melody, more or less freed from pitches (identifiable frequencies)." The "freedom" from pitches (or tonality) I believe symbolizes the ultimate freedom/liberty that masonry works towards. This is gnostic and egalitarian.
- Commenting on the music for the initiation ritual: "Here, there is no binary (imperfect) or ternary (perfect) rhythm, but a chaotic, polyrhythmic sound landscape, from which light and harmony will later emerge: that of the perfect chord of tonal music on intervals of third (3) and fifth (5) and, for the so-called "perfect" cadence, a dominant seventh chord (7) which resolves on the tonic chord (1)."
Consonance is heard in the organ ceremony
While listening to the invocations of the organ in Notre Dame ceremony, it is clear that, despite the chaos occurring throughout, they all end on a consonant chord, usually major, but sometimes minor. My analysis:
- First invocation ends on G Major chord (see how Latry’s fingers land on G-major
here, left hand is D-G-B-D, which is called a second-inversion G Major chord, right hand is G-B-D-G, called root position G Major);
- Second invocation ends on D Major chord;
- Third invocation ends on D Major chord;
- Fourth (the most tonal invocation) starts in D minor and ends in D major; with a strong emphasis on the note A (at the beginning and end)
- Fifth starts in D minor (also quite tonal), ends in D Major; the note A can be heard
often in this one as well (even having a pedal A in the bass)
- Sixth ends in G Major;
- Seventh begins in D and ends in D;
- Eighth begins and ends in D Major
Some hypotheses:
The G features in the Square and Compass. It is also present above the throne in Masonic halls, the masonic aprons, and rings
Again: these are not conclusive proofs, but merely curious hypotheses that could explain the emphasis on G, A and D, which seems quite intentional considering the number of times they are repeated (G is repeated twice, D six times, with the note A featuring prominently in the key of D).
Symbolism in the main organist
When raising the possibility of masonic symbolism in the organ music played at Notre Dame’s reopening, some might dismiss it as mere conspiracy theory. However, this possibility becomes more convincing when considering that Olivier Latry, perhaps the most famous of the four organists, has appeared in at least one photograph where he makes a strange gesture with his arms while covering one eye. Sources found on X, here, here, and elsewhere here.
What is this gesture? It has been interpreted by some to be the Eye of Horus or Luminous Delta, a symbol Masonry uses often. See here and here. Note how he is covering one eye and making a two triangles with his arms.
Conclusion
After considering all these things, one question arises: Did the organ ceremony at Notre Dame’s reopening on December 7 have an occult masonic symbology, meant to display Masonry’s power and perhaps also to subconsciously initiate listeners? Nothing can be stated with certainty, but the ensemble of evidence presented here suggests an affirmative answer.
Assuming that what was played were actual improvisations and not previously-composed pieces that were meticulously rehearsed and memorized (which is a possibility), my suspicion is that the organists could have been told to begin and end on a certain key and were given a certain style or composer’s vocabulary from which they were to improvise, but with a strong emphasis on modern composers and a preference for whole tones, tritones, and chaotic tonality (atonality) ending in consonance.
- Five years after the fire, investigations into the cause proved futile, and arson was shockingly ruled out as a possibility.
- After the voice, Pope St. Pius X in his Papal Letter Tra le Sollecitudini singled out the organ as essentially the only acceptable instrument in the liturgy, reminding us of the clerical nature of the choir (called “the choir of levites”) and condemning the use of “noisy and frivolous instruments” such as drums, cymbals, bells, and others.
- These four organists were announced titular organists of Notre Dame on April 24, 2024. See press release at bottom of page here and full article here.
- On that note, an article in French detailing some of Debussy’s esotericism, as well as other 19th century composers and artists can be read here.
- A musical interval is the distance between two notes.
- Tritones are in every cadence that is a dominant seventh to tonic cadence, with a tritone between the 3rd and 7th, here, and also in every major scale, between the fourth and seventh scale degrees, here.
Posted January 29, 2025
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