Middle AgesLéonin
More than eight hundred years ago in Paris, workers began building a huge cathedral: Notre-Dame.
Léonin’s life
The big moments of this life, and what was happening in the world at the same time.
A life at a glance
- 1135👶 Birth
Probable birth, most likely in Paris
- 1150📚 Trainingabout age 15
Studies at the Paris cathedral school
- 1163🏛️ Landmarkabout age 28
Construction of Notre-Dame cathedral begins
- 1163🌍 Meanwhile
Construction of Notre-Dame de Paris begins
- 1165🎩 Careerabout age 30
Canon and poet active around Notre-Dame
- 1170🎼 Workabout age 35
Composes the organa of the Magnus liber organi
- 1180🎼 Workabout age 45
His Latin poems (Hystorie sacre gestas) circulate
- 1190🌍 Meanwhile
Philip Augustus builds the Paris city wall and the Louvre fortress
- 1201🕯️ Deathabout age 66
Probable death around 1201
Listen to the music
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Excerpts of up to 90 seconds, freely licensed recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
Once upon a time…
More than eight hundred years ago in Paris, workers began building a huge cathedral: Notre-Dame. At the same time, a musician called Léonin invented a new way of singing.
Before him, everyone in church sang the same tune. Léonin had the idea of making two voices sing at once: a low voice holding very long notes, like a carpet, and a high voice dancing above it with lots of little notes.
He wrote a big book of songs for every feast of the year. An English scholar called him “the best composer”. Thanks to Léonin, music in several voices started to grow, a bit like the cathedral rising towards the sky.
Léonin’s instruments
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