Notre Dame Reimagined: Le Remède de Fortune

Event details

We regret to inform you that this performance, as well as the pre-concert talk by Habib Shehadeh Hanna scheduled for the same day, has been cancelled. Due to the Middle Eastern crisis, some of the performers are unable to travel to the UK for the concert. The performance will be rescheduled for later in the year (date to be confirmed). Ticket holders will be contacted directly regarding refunds.

Loré Lixenberg  voice
Habib Hanna Shehadeh  oud
Federico Reuben  live coding, AI sounds
Matt Barnard  spatial sound, diffusion

Notre Dame Reimagined is an ambitious project that invites audiences to encounter the famous cathedral's music, iconography and architecture afresh. Rather than reconstructing a lost sound world, it asks what happens when Notre Dame's medieval musical traditions are placed in dialogue with AI, spatial sound and historically informed contemporary performance.

At the heart of the project are immersive performances in which musicians' actions become live inputs to AI models trained on medieval music conceived at the cathedral. Recordings of Notre Dame School polyphony serve as the basis for generative AI systems that respond in real time. Voices bloom into chant and polyphony within the space, while architectural details are revealed through virtual acoustics. Audiences are drawn into the cathedral's legacy, experiencing it not as a monument of the past but as a site of ongoing transformation and innovation

The programme centres on Guillaume de Machaut's Le Remède de Fortune, a long narrative poem with embedded songs that stands as one of the defining works of fourteenth-century courtly culture. A young poet, convinced he has broken faith with his beloved Lady Fortune, spirals into panic before encountering Lady Hope, who offers not rescue but instruction. Machaut traces this journey through a sequence of fixed forms – laments, dances and intricate polyphonic textures – each demanding a finely judged balance of musical detail and emotional insight.

In this performance, courtly love – so often mistakenly framed as an entirely European invention – is heard through echoes of al-Andalus and the Islamic poetic and musical thought that helped to shape it. The oud enters not as embellishment but as a reminder that fourteenth-century France existed within a wider musical and cultural landscape. Its sound threads through Machaut's lines in ways that feel less like commentary and more like recognition, revealing Arabic influences in the music of Notre Dame. The interplay of voice and oud, AI-generated sound and immersive spatial acoustics together extend the piece's geometry.

If you would like to discuss any access requirements with us, please contact the Box Office. Information about our companion card scheme, group bookings and free tickets for under-16s can be found on our website.