Dating to the s, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon is one of the largest instruments in the world—with 72 bronze bells that combine to weigh tons. The iconic instrument draws scores of carillon players and music lovers each year for its summer concert series, and rings out during UChicago recitals and events. But during the academic year, it also takes requests. Played twice a day noon and 5 p.
To hear your favorite song on the carillon, submit your request online. Below are a mix of the most-requested popular songs and some student favorites—plus commentary from Brink. Guess what our most requested song is? Commissioned by Yale University in for the 50th anniversary of their carillon, the full Kaleidoscope suite is dedicated to my sister, Meg.
Look out for it any day of the week! Kahoot is a classroom quiz tool, and this theme plays in the platform lobby and during the quiz. Put this one on endless repeat for the right effect. A popular request, and very effective on the bells.
Listen for the Riders of Rohan melody on the big bass bells! But tapping the tiny ivory keys of a piano, he insists, is almost a completely different skill than thumping the heavy wooden planks and batons that serve as keys in these oversize bell towers.
When it was his turn to impress the judges on Saturday evening, Chase took an elevator to the eighth floor of the carillon and sat stiffly on a wooden bench. Like many of its peers, the Rees Memorial Carillon occupies an enclosed tower. You can see a few bells peeking out from the walls, but the player is obscured by stone and concrete. A couple minutes later, Chase exited the carillon through a glass door and made a beeline for an empty picnic table, where he sat and fidgeted with his phone.
The lack of fanfare? He improved the musical qualities of his carillon and began a series of weekly concerts that became famous beyond the borders of his own country. In particular, they inspired an American civil servant, William Gorham Rice, who wrote a series of books popularizing this Old World instrument. At the same time, developments in England led to the rediscovery of the art of bell tuning.
England never developed a tradition of playing music on sets of bells. Instead, the English invented a unique system of ringing mathematical variations on bells, called change ringing. Bells are swung in change ringing, so they were shortened to make them easier to swing. The negative effect this had on the tone of the bells was a serious consideration in change ringing. In the latter part of the 19th century, a Church of England clergyman and ardent bell ringer, Canon Simpson, began investigating why English ringing bells sounded so poor.
The first set of "Simpson" tuned bells was cast by the Taylor bell foundry of Loughborough, England, and installed in Ames, Iowa. Today, those 10 bells are the foundation of an important carillon at Iowa State University. Van Heuven of bells removed during the war from towers in the Low Countries, modern founders now consistently surpass the standards set by the Hemony brothers over years ago.
In addition to more accurate tuning, another advance of modern founders is the development of thicker profiles for the small treble bells, so their sound will balance. The molten metal is then poured into a mold made up of a core, which is the shape of the inside section of the bell, and a cope, which is the shape of the outside of the bell. A bell's weight and profile , or shape, determine its note and the quality of its tone.
Once cast, a bell must be tuned. Most musical instruments produce a complex set of harmonically related overtones, or partials. A bell, on the other hand, produces a sound whose partial tones are not necessarily harmonically related.
To produce a pleasing, harmonically related series of tones, the bell's profile is very carefully adjusted, or tuned, by the bell founder. Bell founders tune five principal tones of a bell. These are the hum tone , the lowest-pitched partial, produced by the vibration of the entire bell. An octave above that is the prime. This is the tone for which the bell is named, because it is also the pitch of the strike note , the most prominent tone heard when the bell is struck. Next is the tierce , sounding a minor third above the prime.
The tierce is unique to bells and gives them their somewhat plaintive sound. Above that is the quint , a partial sounding a fifth above prime, and last is the nominal , sounding an octave above the prime and two octaves above the hum tone.
There are many more partial tones, but these are usually the only ones tuned. The casting process isn't sufficiently precise to produce a perfectly tuned bell profile, so carillon bells are cast slightly thick, then put on a lathe see picture where metal is cut from the inside surface to adjust the various partial tones. Each partial is tuned separately, by removing metal from a different area of the bell. The tuner aims to get the partials into a harmonically related series in which the strike note of the bell is in tune with the other bells in the ensemble.
Once tuned at the foundry, a bell never needs further tuning in the tower. Bells over years old sound as they did when they left their maker's hands. A bell's greatest enemies are fire, which can destroy the bell, and air pollution, which dissolves the bell metal, thus affecting the tuning. Carillon bells are bolted to steel or wooden beams and do not move in performance. Instead, the clappers, which are connected by a direct mechanical linkage to the keys of the keyboard, move to strike the bell.
The carillon's mechanical playing action, like that of the piano, gives the performer the ability to control dynamics and phrasing by variation of touch. Although the traditional carillon keyboard sometimes called a clavier shares some similarities with other keyboard instruments, performance technique is unique to the carillon. The keyboard has a manual key played by the hand for each note in the carillon.
These keys are sometimes called batons because they are wooden levers about 2 feet in length, and rounded at the playing end, resembling batons. In addition, there are one to two octaves of pedal keys, played with the feet, that pull down the corresponding manual keys.
This permits a performer to play the heavy bass bells with the feet, while still using hands in the middle and upper octaves. Up to six bells can thus be sounded at once. Generally it is not musically desirable to do so, however, because the rich overtone structure of bells produces a muddy, dense effect when too many are sounded at once. Although the keys are played with a closed fist, the carillonneur does not "pound" or "beat" the keys.
A properly adjusted and maintained carillon allows the performer to play with a minimum of effort. The motion of the key is carried to the bell's clapper by a wire, usually made of stainless steel. In the bell chamber, the wire is attached to a transmission system that transfers the motion from a vertical wire to a horizontal wire that pulls the bell's clapper see illustration at the right. At rest, the clapper is about 2 inches from the bell wall. Immediately above the key is an adjuster that allows the performer to compensate for changes in wire length due to temperature changes.
The keyboard should be located close to the bells to keep the mechanical connections short, allowing for more precise playing. When the keyboard is too far from the bells, the mass of long wires keeps the clapper against the bell too long, deadening the sound.
On large bells, gravity is sufficient to pull the clapper back from the bell; for smaller bells, return springs are needed to pull the clapper back quickly.
While at first glance it may seem that an electric mechanism might be better than a mechanical action, no electrical system has yet been developed that permits expression through variation of touch, as required for proper musical performance. Electrical strikers hit the bell with the same force every time, so none of the great dynamic range of the bell is available to the performer.
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