Erratum to ‘Ears of the past, an inquiry into the sonic memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame before the fire of 2019’ [Journal of Cultural Heritage Volume 56C (July-August 2022) 130-137]

This interdisciplinary study brings together acousticians and anthropologists to examine the memory of the acoustics of Notre-Dame de Paris before the fire of April 2019, using a qualitative approach to collect the testimonies of 18 people involved in the sound usages of the cathedral. Testimonies were analyzed in light of research conducted in the anthropology of the senses, sensory perception, memory, and cultural heritage. Analysis highlights an apparent contradiction between the remarkable acoustics of the monu-ment before the fire and the impression of musicians. These musicians reported a struggle to tame the cathedral & rsquo;s sound space, to hear each other well enough to craft their performances and to reach an acceptable level of clarity in their musical practice. These phenomena are examined with acoustic mea-surements and numerical simulations using a calibrated geometrical acoustics model of the cathedral before the fire, which allows for an objective exploration of the acoustic characteristics of Notre-Dame. This analysis concludes that the well-known reverberation of Notre-Dame, as well as the acoustic bar-rier of the transept and the poor acoustic return on the podium (the usual place for concert performers) negatively impact singers & rsquo; comfort. This highlights the tension between the original architectural design of the cathedral and its modern religious and cultural usages. However, the regular occupants have de-veloped a deep familiarity with these constraints during their ritual and musical practices, adjusting to the acoustics in a unique way. Such a tradition of adaptation must be considered as a part of cultural practice, not to be overlooked during the reconstruction. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )