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Hi all

Are there any recordings that have been made of the settings of the plainchant "Viderunt Omnes" by either Leonin or Perotin that have been recorded in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris? If not, why not, and what are the reasons?

Thank-you in advance for any help in answering this question.

Greg

There are 3 obvious reasons:
1. the acoustics of Gothic-cathedral-like spaces are similar enough that recording in one will sound pretty much like any other, assuming a similar, if not identical, geometrical configuration of the walls and ceiling. There'd be a sonic difference between a cathedral and a basilica, for example, because of the transept in the former, though the difference would probably only be significant in a surround-sound recording.
2. The logistics of recording in a high-usage space like Notre Dame would be horrendous. That's probably why few have managed to record Palestrina in the Sistine Chapel, though the Tallis Scholars once managed to do precisely that, as I recall.
3. a modern digital recording in Notre Dame will have to cope with the leakage of city noise, which even in the dead of night is loud enough to be nearly impossible to block out (not with all that stained glass around). The engineers could get closer with the microphones, but this would reduce the effect, and relevance, of the ambient sound you were trying to capture in the first place. And cars and trucks are definitely not part of the original acoustic environment of the Notre Dame school.

--Sixtus

NOTE: There is a recording of Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame made in an authentic historical setting (Reims Cathedral). It's the one on Naxos. Other noteworthy original-acoustics recordings include Bernstein's of the Berlioz Requiem (CBS/SONY), Gardiner's of the Symphonie fantastique (Philips) and Messiaen's recordings of his own organ music (EMI, unfortunately in mono). There have been disappointingly few recordings on original instruments from Bach's Thomaskirche in Leipzig even despite the fact that the acoustics there have been altered from Bach's time -- Leipzig is not much of an "authenticity" town. And the Nimbus recordings of Haydn Symphonies from the Esterhazy palace are hampered by relatively poor recording quality and the stodgy nature of the performances on modern instruments.

Another example is the very fine 1982 recording of Haydn's Creation from the hall of its first performance, at the 'Old University' in Vienna - conducted by Gustav Kuhn.

panda wrote:Another example is the very fine 1982 recording of Haydn's Creation from the hall of its first performance, at the 'Old University' in Vienna - conducted by Gustav Kuhn.

The Kuhn recording is available on video, I think, as is Gardiner's recording of the Symphonie fantastique, itself a must-see. If you want to include more videos I think (haven't seen it) the Bernstein DVD performance of the Berlioz Requiem was done in St Louis des Invalides in Paris, Berlioz' original and intended performance venue. And there are a bunch of Mozart opera DVDs performed in Sweden's Drottningholm theater, which provides authentic, if very cramped-sounding, 18th century acoustics. But even a larger 18th century opera house would sound "dry" to modern ears accustomed to "high fidelity" studio opera recordings, most of which are inappropriately and inauthentically too reverberant for my ears, much as most "Broadway-cast" albums have artificial reverb making them sound far too genteel compared to the in-your-face sound of an unmiked Broadway pit band here in NYC. Unfortunately pit bands are now uniformly miked and reverbed to death, making them sound like original-cast recordings. Talk about vicious circle.

--Sixtus