This was a special mass for the Paris fire brigade, and Latry based this improvisation on the sound of a fire engine’s siren. Fast forward a few years, and here we are: the cathedral is on fire. Ironic to say the least, but hopefully all is not lost and the organ is saved… EDIT: The organ is miraculously untouched after the fire!
To those who wonder what it is like to be in the loft when Mr. Latry unleashes something like this, let me assure you from personal experience that it is like the cathedral itself is singing, with everything solid in vibration, as if the atmosphere itself suddenly became a series of solid things, clashing, and rushing by. Under all that moving air, you feel as exhilarated as if you were crouched beneath a storm passing by just overhead. It is something like that.
Listening to his improvisation, I would find it impossible to want to leave the building (which is the whole purpose of the Recessional). French improvisation is very unique and rich in tradition and has created a large quantity of amazing performances. Bravo! I wish success for the New Organ Project.
I keep coming back to this one. As others have commented, not a lot of counterpoint, subtlety, and what-not, but Latry is a top-shelf organist -- as demonstrated in his new recording of the complete works of Messiaen. Here, he just puts his foot to the floor and rocks the house. It's not always what you want to hear at the end of a Sunday service, but to get some from time to time... makes me want to move to Paris!
Monsieur Latry is a BEAST when it comes to the organ. I'm a church organist myself, but nothing even close to that caliber. Latry, I will admit, has inspired some of my improvisations in my small church. BMP
please i beg you to sit in front of an organ and play hot cross buns let alone attempt to play something like this. Keep your mouth shut unless you can play ass well as this
iSNARK! I’m sure many in this room would love to hear your improvisations. We wouldn’t compare you with M. Latry, but rather would comment on your playing on your own merits. Please, give this room a shot!
Just awesome, he just takes all of the BREATH out of the organ.... he cleans the air in the church with his music...when you finish listening to Lantry you are tired and worn out....
When I was in Paris many years ago, I visited Notre Dame. It so happened that there was a service starting as I was wandering around the church, sightseeing. Suddenly the most amazing sounds filled the church, I froze, listening, in awe of the master playing the organ. Afterwards I asked in the lady in the information booth if it was indeed M. Latry, and she confirmed that it was. I have been to many concerts, as audience and as a performer, but this is one of my finest memories.
If anyone where to accurately transcribe this as an orchestral piece, finding in an orchestra the exact timbres Latry creates, they would compose one of the great symphonic preludes of their century, they’d be master orchestrators. And all that was just in a bit of improvised music that just fell from Latry’s fingers.
It is a miracle to see the organ standing still after the fire without extremely critical damages. It will need a big restoration indeed but it is a pretext to be happy to see the instrument on its place!
@DANIEL GOLDEN Organ is 'OK' it is set well back between the towers, nor the water or flames got any where near it in it's 'cave' Just smoke and minor debris...also the wind was taking the fire toward the alter. It's all a bit of a minor miracle !
If I remember rightly, I believe I was once told that this was a special service in celebration of the Fire Brigade and that Latry's improvisation was based on the 'nee-naw' of a fire engine.
I was filled with horror and great sadness as I watched Notre Dame burning yesterday. This particular improvisation comes with a lot of irony, given that it followed a Mass dedicated to the firefighters of Paris, its motif being based on the sound of fire-engine sirens.
I can only hope for the sake of Latry, the French peoples, and all of the music world that the great pipes have been spared. My heart aches for Our Lady.
Out of the ashes......Early indications are that the great organ has survived! May be a long time before we hear its voice again but reconstruction will give it another life.
What an incalculably heartbreaking loss to the people of France and the world. May this wonderful music some day again reverberate around the walls of a restored Notre Dame.
Great impro. As mentioned by one commentator, this concludes a service dedicated to the Paris fire brigade, hence the opening theme - the fire truck siren.
@@tinkaluisa8540Thanks to the amazing work of les pompiers the building is still standing, the organ has been saved and most of the important stained glass is intact. A professor of fire science is quoted in todays (London) Times as saying that he expects Notre Dame to become a textbook example of how to fight fire in an old building.
He is phenomenal. You may argue about this or quibble about that but Latry gets it done. The combination of organist, organ and that space is unforgettable.
I learned how to improvise by listening to Latry. I could care less about the theory. Improvisation mostly has to deal with listening and experimentation as far as I'm concerned.
some people really do not know how to appreciate fantastic art which comes just from the finger tips of a simple human being!!! He is flesh and bones like all of us! he's just different in a way that he's one of the few privileged persons on earth who really enjoy what he does and that's why he is so successful!!! Your Kultur Banat - R.R.A.
J'ai une pensée pour Olivier latri ce soir, qui doit être fort triste de voir la cathédrale en feu et par ailleurs l instrument dont il est titulaire, les grands orgues de notre Dame de Paris 😢😢
People...after a bottle of Bordeaux Wine & bit of Camembert cheese I decided to post also a comment, maybe because I went through most of the comments or maybe because it is time to do so... anyway I just want to make some clarifications...undoubtedly it was my best organ life experience ever...O.L. is one of the kindest persons you can really imagine...the stunning sound of his playing and of course the result of Cavaille Coll's work
fantastic to hear!! some textures, rhythms and harmonies seemed to remind me of a piece called "fluorescence" (sadly the name of the composer escapes me) but it's just phenomenal how he plays!!
So heart breaking! Today the fire and all that is left is memories, I pray that the towers don't burn. so that Paris will still have some of Notre Dam's voices to continue to enrich the city with the sound of bells which seemed to have been ringing since the dawn of man
News reports say that the bell tower survived, and the damage, while serious, is not as catastrophic as originally feared. I received one unconfirmed report that the organ escaped with little damage. Hoping that turns out to be true.
(even though some things were changed during the restoration from 1991 ) cannot be portrayed by any video recording!!!And that's a fact! I didn't put the recording just to show that I was there, I've put it just because I wanted to share a glimpse of what really is THE crème de la crème of pipe organ business. I wanted to put other recordings with Monsieur Latry but I've decided that it's better to keep these memories just for my self because
sophelet: The improvisation Olivier Latry is doing in this video is at the very end of Mass, the when the people are dismissed and the clergy process out of the sanctuary. Latry is invoking a cataclysmic sending forth, coupled with the elation of being filled with the invigorating presence of Jesus Christ after Holy Communion. The pieces organists do are keyed to what is happening liturgically at any given time, and some of those are indeed hushed and intimate, but this isn't one of them. :)
I’d say a “cataclysmic sending forth” is as good a description as any. If you think of some Catholic theologians’ interpretation of Revelations as a grand, symbolic narrative about the one and eternal victory of Christ _now,_ then it’s not only cataclysmic, it’s positively _apocalyptic._
It takes a lot of imagination to grasp what this must have sounded like (mind blowing) in the nave. This video sounds like it was recorded not just on someone's phone, but OVER someone's phone - through the lousy, low res phone line. The sound is terrible. Not only that, but the worst place in the room to hear an organ like this is at the console. The instrument is simply not voiced to sound good at the console - it's voiced for that massive nave. So it really does take a lot of mental processing to imagine what this sounded like downstairs. But that's all beside the point. Someone in the organ loft had the wit to pull out their phone and grab this, an incredibly valuable record of an event, and of a musical genius at work. Regardless of the sound quality, thanks for posting.
And their is some real tragedy in this: the organist him/herself actually never is able to listen to how his /her music sounds in the nave...... That is quite unique for this instrument.
I saw him twice last month, and met him briefly. What an amazing human being -- so gifted, so acclaimed, and yet he's touring to raise funds to help support his Notre-Dame co-workers who now are unemployed due to the fire. Greatness, humility and kindness all in one person.
How can this be the final mass he played at N.Dame when RU-vid says this video is from 12 years ago??? The fire was only 5 years ago in 2019. Something is not right here !
It's true, as a church organist / musician I always roll my eyes when the congregation applauds after the recessional is done (assuming if they even do stay). I do appreciate personal face-to-face feedback and compliments though not the general applause as if the Mass is a concert.
I take my hat off to M. Latry and others of his outstanding talent. Does anybody understand why it is that these enormous spaces seem to invite the style of improvisation such as that shown here It seems as if this sort of instant composition finds its roots in the late m Dupre of Saint Sulpice. Similarly the late M. Cochereau played many a final improvisation in this full organ approach topped off at the end with batteries of chamades and B-52' type 32' Bombardes!
When my dad used to do this, we called it "dweezling around on the organ". Dweezling is a simple method of improvising that involves quite a lot of rather aimless but pleasing effects, and movement simply for the sake of carrying on. I wonder if the people in the congregation felt they were slipping through a movie montage.
Absolutely astounding. Is he improvising on a pre-existing melody or chant? It doesn't sound like it, but I don't know. Now that I have watched several videos of Latry, Roth, and other remarkable organists, I am curious how they would improvise when the occasion calls for something hushed and prayerful. Is the result always so dense, so busy? Does it have to be in that place in order to make an impression? Or is this just the prevailing French style?
Yes the balance of the instrument was changed in 1990-92 in the last overall where two further ranks of en chamade (horizontal) reeds were added, meaning five ranks in total. Used sparingly it's ok but invariably all are used and you may as well be in a cattery. Cats and more cats, and ear damage at the same time.
This organ is very difficult to record and most recording engineers do not know how to do it. It has the power in volume of going from a Whisper to the fffff of a Jet plane. The recording he does not do M. Latry justice---because of the distortions that the recording does. This has been shown time and time again from the days when Louis Vierne attempted to record here all the way down to the prestent presentation NOW I am wondering if M. Larty is still chief organist of Notre Dame?
william skylark The only recording company to really do justice to Notre-Dame was Philips, back in LP days. And remember, this was in Cochereau's heyday, when the Chamades were even louder than now...
+Dissily Mordentroge Hello, I am a church organist myself and in pieces such as these (although I do not play as well as Latry) I find various Theological and Spiritual/Mystical connections and meanings. I find large scale organ music like this to create a poetic and symbolic "microcosm" of the infinite Universe which God Created. This dramatic and beautiful organ music is a metaphor for God's Creation. Indeed, such music invites us to dramatically reflect on and meditate upon God's Creation and his role as Creator. In this music I can almost see the power of God's cosmic presence and reality and his guiding hand in all the turbulence, harmony, and chaos of an infinite an unfolding Universe of his Creation. Indeed, it represents to me the awesome title of "Deity" and what such a concept entails. The music invites us to wonder and postulate about God's Universe from a new, Modern, and Abstact Scientific Way. This music is "Scientific" in the way that it makes us reflect on God in Universal terms. This music evokes mental images of science textbooks with pictures of atoms and electrons whizzing around a nucleus and stars and planets colliding in the turbulence of spiraling Galaxies. For example, when he plays very loud and flashing individual flares of quick-notes I think of Light travelling at its incredible speed through out vast distances of space. When he plays deep "roaring" pedal notes, I think of black holes and planets being formed from various elements and materials. Or I imagine a huge earthquake or the massive geological stages of the development of this planet, the earth, during the time when its continents divided into 7 continents from the super-continent of Pangea. This kind of music is indeed radically modern and shocking and does not deal with traditional Christian doctrines and dogmas strictly, but in other such modern and abstract pieces, these same traditional forms of Christian Theological Ideas are musically meditated upon by composers. But, as a final note, this music fulfill's a Cathedral's ambition to try to represent a small-scale "model" of the Universe. It is fitting, therefore, that Cathedrals, purposely designed to represent a sort of "microcosm" of the Universe and all-existence, should therefore be given such pomp. The procession of the Bishop, Priests, and other members of the Clergy represent the Divine Presence not only of God in the Universe, but also of Christ, the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, the Holy Angels, and all the Saints. This procession in and out of the Cathedral in great reverence and marked-ness is purposeful because it represents the movement of God as manifest in all these forms and manifestations, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit. All this, and more, are some of the reflections which this kind of music produces in me. However, I do not think this music is an end in itself. Unless it is done with devotional, reflective and meditative intention and pursuit, then it can actually be quite empty. Sometimes I seek something more traditional and direct as hymns or Bach's Organ Music or Classical Organ Music because of how sturdy and absolute and pure in its religious reflection it is. Yet however, sometimes I greatly seek Modern and Abstract Organ Music because it allows reflections which often feel more radically relevant for today and spiritually-emotional for the situations going on in the Scientific world today, as well as today's world of current events.
Symbolic 'misrocosm' of the infinite Universe"? The music invites us to wonder and postulate about God's Universe from a new, Modern, and Abstact Scientific Way? If I hear any connection between this improvisation and scripture it's a portrayal of a sado-masochist deity who torutured his own son ( who is himself if you swallow trinitarian theology whole) to redeem humanities sins, sins made possible by the deity itself.
You fucking fool. If you digested "trinitarian theology" you would know God is ALSO Jesus. God made us with FREE WILL so morons like yourself can challenge his existence. God face palmed so hard that like a good Sky Daddy he tortured HIMSELF to save us from our own bullshit. So that people today can find archaeological evidence of Roman Crucifixion, original documents that date TWO YEARS AFTER the 'resurrection' of Jesus, the empty burial site, enemies of Jesus unable to produce his dead body, People who once murdered followers of Jesus to die as apostles of Jesus. So that people today can say we know enough science to sort of understand that this "Goldie Locks" universe was made by accident. When today science continues to tell us the opposite. That our Universe's laws of physics and atomic properties were determined less than 1/10th of a second after the big bang! That's like a tornado making a Boeing 747 out of a junk yard! And the best part is you can do whatever the FUCK you want, but God is there as your father to give you blessings and help you out. That's it. God is your sky dad. He loves you and made you. And has a plan for your life.
Madness, un vrai maître sur un instrument impressionnant! Super! Wahnsinn, ein wahrer Meister an einem beeindruckenden Instrument! Toll! Madness, a true master on an impressive instrument! Great!
@organistpeter Na ja er hatte ein bisschen Glück gehabt und eine gute Erziehung von den besten der besten gekriegt Dazu ist er auch ein netter Mensch...
Het orgel klinkt hier als een brulaap in het oerwoud. Het is zoals gewoonlijk met Latry.....veel geschreeuw maar weinig wol. Spelen kan hij zeker maar als improvisator hoor ik veel liever Daniel Roth. Jammer van al die moeite en het oorverdovende LAWAAI \ Harm Timmer
Hearing damage accumulated = [(distance of En Chamade from console) x (amount of time playing the with said En Chamade on)] / (Olivier Latry's hearing damage)
Olivier Latry is a Great , Extremelly Talented from the Triune God Organist and when playing the Organ the Whole Heaven United with the Earth !!!!! Amazing !!!!!!!!
La virtuosité très élevée de l'artiste est indiscutable et bien prouvée, l'orgue a des qualités bien connues, mais est-ce que les fidèles présents dans l'église apprécient cela, surtout ceux qui ne sont pas familiers de la musique de ce type, on peut en douter.
