The Cathedral Organ Restored

In 2014, the pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Laon in northern France sat silent. Centuries of dust, neglect, and amateur repairs had choked its 3,000 pipes. Some had been plugged with newspaper. Others were bent or corroded beyond recognition. A team of master craftsmen from a Parisian workshop spent three painstaking years dismantling every pipe, cleaning each one by hand, and restoring the wind chests that gave the instrument its breath.…