Did you know that…

• nowadays carillons can be found on every continent except for Antarctica
• the carillon is the heaviest of all musical instruments
• there are only (or as many as) 640 carillons worldwide
• the country with the biggest number of carillons is Holland: there are 180 carillons, of which 6 are in Amsterdam
• at the dawn of their history carillons played the role of radio: they played popular melodies and cheered up the city dwellers
• the biggest carillon in the world is the one in Taejon, South Korea – it consists of 78 bells; this extraordinary instrument was built on the initiative of Byung-I Lee, a businessman who wanted to honor his deceased mother: the number of the bells corresponds to the number of the years of her life
• the heaviest carillon in the world is the Rockefeller carillon in Riverside Church, New York City – it weighs 100 tons and the bourdon bell of this instrument sounds the note C, weighs more than 20 tons and is more than 3 meters in diameter
• in French the huge carillon shares its name with the tiny glockenspiel and in German the carillon is often called Glockenspiel
• in the beginning of 20th century, Jacob Vincent, an Amsterdam carillonist enjoyed such great fame that a cigar was named after him: “carillonist J. Vincent – the newest and the best three-cent cigar”
• during World War II, 46 out of 213 European carillons were destroyed or requisitioned for military needs
• in Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa there is a carillon which only works in automatic mode now that was built in 1905 by a Mechelen bell-maker for whom it was the first and the last carillon in his career
• only 18 carillons in the world are mobile instruments – one of them can be found in Gdańsk, unless it is not travelling at the moment
• in Gdańsk, a unique idea was born, picked up later by many European cities: carillon and electronic music concerts combined with the Heweliusz Fountain shows which was constructed on the initiative of the GIWK (Gdańsk Water and Sewage Infrastructure)

Some of the composers who wrote for carillons:

• Jakob van Eyck
• Matthias Van den Gheyn (zwany “Bachem carillonu” lub “belgijskim Bachem”)
• Joannes Franciscus Volckerick (autor pierwszych oryginalnych romantycznych utworów na carillon)
• Samuel Barber
• Edward Elgar
  John Cage
• George Crumb
  Nino Rota
• Aleksander Nowak
• Paweł Mykietyn
• Elżbieta Sikora
• Agnieszka Stulgińska
• Katarzyna Kwiecień-Długosz
• Zygmunt Krauze
• Agata Zubel

What exactly is a carillon? A short story of carillons

Carillons are usually placed in belfries (towers) of churches, town halls or other prominent municipal buildings and also on their facades. There is also a mobile type of the instrument – a carillon placed on a car.

Carillons can be played in two modes: automatically – by means of a mechanical cylinder with pegs, which plays short melodies, or manually when a musician called a carillonist or carillonneur gives a concert.

The history of the carillon dates back to the Middle Ages and is closely related to the history of bells and the development of cities. Violins have souls but amongst musical instruments, bells are the only ones to have hearts (in Polish there is an idiom “a heart like a bell”, meaning a strong, healthy heart, while in English there is a phrase “clear as a bell”). However, there are “heartless” bells: Asian instruments used for liturgical purposes, hit with a small hammer. The earliest bells were discovered in China and they were made during the reign of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC). European and Asian bells differ in shape. There are also spherical bells. In medieval Europe the bells played crucial role in the city life: the sound of bells warned, announced new laws, called to arms, called people to help fight the fire etc. Every guild had their own bell, signalling the beginning and the end of work hours. To this day bells are given names. One of the most spectacular stories of the bells is shown in Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie Andrei Rublev.

As early as in 12th century in the Netherlands bellmen called beyaerders, proclaimed important events from church towers moving the hearts of bells by a system of ropes. Probably from this activity the Dutch word beiaard derives, meaning a carillon. The verb beieren means “to rhythmically hit the hearts of unmoving bells”. The baton keyboard was first used in Oudenaarde in 1510 and this date is considered the birth of the carillon.

In the rich mercantile cities of Northern Europe chimes and carillons were a sign of the city status. It was said that a well-managed city had good schools and good bells. The biggest towns could boast of possessing several carillons – except for the municipal carillon they were the instruments in cathedrals and main churches. The town carillonists used to play during holidays and city fairs, they were also supposed to exchange the pegs in the mechanism a few times a year.

The golden age of carillons ended along with the change of the musical and historical epoch – the French Revolution and violent changes in habits, customs and tastes that it brought, caused carillons to be forgotten for many years. The art of tuning the bells perfectly was gradually lost, the bell-making business was in crisis and in the thriving bourgeois culture salon music was preferred. In the Romanticism era carillons were considered the relicts of past times. Only it the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century these great instruments had their great comeback.
It happened mostly due to the efforts of the Belgian carillonist Jef Denijn (1862-1941). The musician and constructor from the mentioned above town of Mechelen, revolutionized the playing mechanism and also initiated in 1892 a cycle of Monday evening concerts from the Saint Rumbold’s cathedral tower in his hometown. He founded in Mechelen the first institute of campanology (bell science) in the world. To honor its founder, the still working school has been renamed Royal Carillon School „Jef Denijn”.
During the carillon renaissance it turned out that many bells, among them the excellent Hemony brothers’ instruments, were corroded by the polluted air and needed renovation.

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries there was an intensive development of original carillon literature – it was possible thanks to the concert, popularizing and publicist activities of carillon virtuosos. Today numerous solo works for carillon are written but also cameral music is composed – remarkable consonances of the carillon with brass instruments, strings, percussion, choir, tape or an orchestra.

Gdańsk carillons

Main Town Hall carillon  

St Catherine’s church carillonists recruited from among Gdańsk church organists – in those times they were entitled to service accommodation. Their duties comprised changing tunes on the drum of the mechanism every Saturday and manual playing suitable compositions every day between 11 and 11.30 am and in the summer time also on Sundays and holidays between 5 and 5.30 pm. They were also to play during funerals and City Council elections. A clock overseer was assigned to assist the carillonist: both specialists had to take care of the tower clock, though many times there was a bit of misunderstanding between them.

On 3rd July 1905 St Catherine’s church tower was struck by a lightning. The fire destroyed the carillon. Three years later a new instrument was ordered from the Schilling bell foundry in Apolda in Thurningia. The new carillon consisted of 37 bells and weighed 16760 kg which made it one of the heaviest in the world. The carillon was installed on the tower in 1910. The war did not spare that carillon either: in 1942 on Göring’s order, the bells were sent back for melting. Fortunately, 28 of them survived and today they are a part of the 36-bells carillon on Saint Mary’s church tower in Lübeck.
From the original set of bells, now on the tower of St. Catherine there is only one, weighing 1,5 tons.