Carillon Bells, Towers, Angelic Tones

The bells that are nearby are at Brigham Young University campus. They herald out so loudly and were chiming when I visited the MOA with Fillerup's & McIntire's on Wednesday this last week. It is like a having a chorus of Angels playing this beautiful music. They sounded for about fifteen minutes. It was incredible.



I don't know why, but the sounds of bells always gives me a feeling of heavenly tones. I found some photos of the Carillon bells and wanted to post them here.

The Carillon by Justin Ryan

A carillon is a collection of large bronze musical bells played from a keyboard. Despite its size, the carillonneur has delicate control over the volume of individual bells, allowing for musical expression to rival any other instrument. Carillons have 23 or more bells--the greatest number is 77, while an average instrument contains 48, or four octaves. Carillon bells are fixed in place and struck by clappers from the inside, which are connected by wires to an organ-like keyboard (click for a diagram). The keys are played by closed hands and feet (see photo to the right, and video in the Performances tab above). The bells themselves range from less than 20 lbs. and 6" inches across to 40,000 lbs. and bigger than a large farm animal.

Bells produce a profoundly different sound, or timbre, than most other instruments, due to their shape. Most notably, they have a prominent minor third overtone built in, resulting in the characteristic somber quality (see overtones below). Also, a carillonneur cannot stop the bell's ringing once it has been struck, so music composed or arranged for the instrument must factor in this buildup of sonority, like a piano played with the damper pedal always down. Music heard on carillons includes folk song arrangements, classical transcriptions, and original compositions, with wide variations in style and repertoire across Europe and North America.

Carillons originated in the Low Countries--present-day Netherlands and Belgium--in the 16th century. Before carillons, bells were used to signal the community, such as the opening and closing of a town's gates, working hours, fires, and invading armies. When clocks were invented, bells tolled the hours, but people tended to lose count of the number of bell strikes. So, automatic mechanisms were set up to play simple 'pay-attention!' tunes before the hour (see photo).

Not long after, the person responsible for striking the bells and winding the clock weights realized he too could play melodies, and keyboards were designed. Even though the carillon towers were typically attached to churches, the towers and bells were traditionally city property, and the carillonneurs civil servants. This is still the case today in much of Europe. Thus, the carillon is historically a folk instrument rather than a religious one.

Several carillons in Europe still use 17th century bells, which were finely tuned centuries ago and are still beautiful instruments. The technology and methods for bell tuning and casting has changed very little since then, as it is not possible to mass-produce. The art was lost, though, for most of the 1800's, a century that did not produce any decent bells.
2. Bell & Natural Harmonics