Musical Discovery

I live a few blocks away from the UC Berkeley campus, and yesterday as I was roaming up Telegraph Avenue and wandering the paths of the Cal campus, my friend and I found ourselves under the shadow of the great Campanile. At 307 feet tall, this great monolith of stone and bell is impressive. It's visible from miles away, and it's been tolling the hours since 1914. As an alum of Mills College I have to interject here that we have our own Campanile, erected by Julia Morgan in 1904 (a full 10-years before Cal's), and was the first reinforced concrete structure west of the Mississippi (did I spell that right?). Our dear Campanile tolls every quarter hour and its quaint song is permanently embedded in my very being, since I have to hear the thing 4 times an hour, all day long. We have four bells, named Faith, Hope, Peace and Joy.

Anyhow. Yesterday we were under Cal's Campanile a little before 3 in the afternoon, and I heard strange faint music coming from the tower. It was more than just the usual Big Ben chimes, but many notes, almost a kind of noodling of sound. When 3pm came we heard the regular sort of tolling of the hour (which scared the crap out of me--that thing is loud!), but a minute later I was startled by a chorus of wonderful music. I couldn't believe my ears, but there was a full range of notes being played. It was amazing. Why hadn't I ever heard this before? This went on for a few minutes, and then stopped. Then a minute later, the Campanile busted out yet another song, and another. My friend, who had seen a segment on a local news channel said that there was an actual person up there in the tower, playing the bells! And they kept playing song after song! That is amazing!

Apparently, the playing of bells has its own name, called Carillon, and a player of bells is called a Carillonist. There are people who actually study this! And guilds and institutes and congresses!

Now, as a taiko player, I've had my fair share of disgruntled neighbors make themselves known to us when we practice. But how the heck do you practice the tolling of bells without completely driving your neighbors crazy? And making taiko drums is quite a task, but can you imagine those die-hard carillonists trying to cast their own sets of bells on the living room floor or in a corner of borrowed space? Boy, I thought we had it hard! But those Cal Carillonists are really great, and I am glad there are people who devote time in their lives to study something so archaic. There's a part of me that likes the severe formality of bells. I could imagine myself below those bells a hundred years ago striding to my lecture wearing a black gown carrying an armload of books and papers and wearing spectacles and disturbing a small flock of pigeons.

Carillon. Go check it out!