La Forêt Model project was in concert with the Gregorian Choir of Paris at Columbia University!
Handshouse’s La Forêt model on display in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University for an event sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program, featuring a performance of the Choeur Grégorien de Paris.
Multiple melodies singing one song
Handshouse Studio was invited to Columbia University last month to exhibit our Notre-Dame Project’s model of “La Forêt,” Notre-Dame de Paris’ timber roof structure that burned in the 2019 fire. Susan Boynton, Professor of Music and Director of Columbia University’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, had organized for the Gregorian Choir of Paris to perform in St. Pauls Chapel at Columbia University as a part of the school’s Sacred Music program, exhibiting music that was originally sung in Notre-Dame de Paris. The talented Gregorian choir sang examples of early polyphony, a style created around the same time that the cavernous vaults of Notre-Dame de Paris were being built, serving as a reverberant example of the interplay between musical and architectural form. Handshouse’s model of La Forêt served as a tactile and visual exploration of Notre-Dame de Paris, while the Gregorian Choir of Paris’ performance brought aural understanding to this fascinating development of sound.
Rather than a single dominant melody accompanied by supporting chords, polyphony is a form of music made up of two or more independent voices of melody singing harmoniously together. Demonstrating her inspired recognition for interdisciplinary harmony, Dr. Lindsay Cook: Professor of Art History at Penn State University, envisioned bringing the voices of many different disciplines together to reveal their richly intertwined histories. Cook and Boynton worked together to bring the Handshouse Notre-Dame Project’s La Forêt model to Columbia University, providing a visual accompaniment for the audience as they learned about the development of polyphony throughout the program.
Handshouse’s model of La Forêt has been created with participants in workshops around the country using as much accuracy as possible on a 1:10 scale. From honoring the unique design of each primary truss to employing tiny mortise and tenon joinery, this model is revealing the complex story of this medieval construction.
La Forêt: Notre-Dame’s Lost Forest
The wooden framework of Notre-Dame’s roof, hidden between the outer lead roof and inner stone cathedral vaulting, is known as “La Forêt” (The Forest) in honor of the more than 1300 oak trees that were felled for its construction. When the Notre-Dame cathedral burned on April 15, 2019, La Forêt caught fire and collapsed, centuries of history falling along with it.
The La Foret Model Project, part of the larger Handshouse Studio: Notre Dame Project, is an ongoing collaboration to explore the intricate wooden roof structure that once stood above the Gothic cathedral. The model project seeks to illuminate the history embodied in this architecture by collaboratively reconstructing a 1:10 scale white oak model as accurately as possible.
La Forêt Model Project participants have been given exclusive access to both Rémi Fromont and Cédric Trentesaux’s meticulous hand-drawn survey and the remarkable composite laser survey assembled by the Chantier Scientifique (CNRS/MC). These archival references, the same resources used for the official reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris, offer a window into understanding the original structure that burned in 2019. Through the act of remaking the structures chronicled in these historic records, participants dive into the mind of the makers who cut timbers in the 12th and 13th centuries.
A procession of trusses
In collaboration with Handshouse, Dr. Cook organized a densely packed day of lectures and small group learning experiences with Tim Michiels, PE, PhD and his Historic Preservation graduate students, Michael J. Waters and his Art History undergraduate students, Susan Boynton and students from Medieval and Renaissance Studies programs, and Mika Tal who generously welcomed Handshouse Studio to take over the Preservation Technology Laboratory for the day.
Columbia students bringing the La Forêt model trusses assembled in the Historic Preservation Laboratory to St. Pauls Chapel where they were fully assembled for the exhibition.
Waves of students were invited to work in groups using the reference resources to figure out how to reassemble each of the individual trusses. Participants had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Lindsay Cook, a leading expert on the Architectural history of Notre Dame de Paris, whose work with the late architectural historian Andrew Tallon to create a near-complete digital record of Notre-Dame of Paris in 2010 was vital to providing details for the accurate reconstruction of the cathedral after the fire. Students also worked with Michael Burrey, Preservation Carpentry faculty at North Bennet Street School (Boston, MA) and Handshouse Studio Notre-Dame Project representative who was invited to assist in the official reconstruction of the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s timber spire. Michael offered demonstrations of historic processes and tools, and entertained us all with stories from his time working on the reconstruction in France.
Participants then lined up to carry their trusses in an architectural procession across campus to the St. Pauls Chapel at Columbia University, where we worked together to finish assembling the model. Unexpectedly, we were in the company of the Gregorian Choir of Paris’ final rehearsals, so we put the model together in hushed silence for the first time, an extra challenge that asked for students and project leaders to slow down and pay attention to each component of the model.
Creating connections across boarders, disciplines and time
Marie Brown, Handshouse Executive Director and Laura Brown Co-founder of Handshouse studio connecting with Emmanuel de Romémont of the Gregorian Choir of Paris over a shared passion for bringing history alive.
Handshouse believes that collaboration is intrinsic to the ongoing effort to revive cultural heritage. Workshops like this one help bring deeper understanding of this iconic edifice. Teaching this history through hands-on experience is a celebration of traditional craft and an act of goodwill among neighbors.
The Gregorian Choir of Paris’s founding vision is to cultivate the universality of sacred song, to seek out its permanent forms, and to safeguard this invisible heritage by enabling as many people as possible to learn the traditions of Western sacred chant.
Both these groups’ educational missions center the importance of embodying cultural heritage in a learn-by-doing model of study, in an effort to bring new life to history.
This remarkable day was a perfect demonstration of how these projects bring people together in a way that opens different ideas toward one another; creating opportunities for individuals to realize connections that might not seem immediately apparent. In bringing together faculty from departments across Columbia University that may not have otherwise worked together and presenting musicians from Paris alongside preservation carpenters from Massachusetts, we are creating discussion and exploration about our connections, and how we can be in shared community even when we feel separate.
Through this workshop, students had the chance to learn side-by-side with experts, bringing together different voices telling the same story in various forms, helping us all to discover the polyphony we are singing across borders, disciplines, and time.
Handshouse’s La Forêt model on display in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University for an event sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program, featuring a performance of the Choeur Grégorien de Paris.