Carillon Bell Tower
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My university has a carillon (bell tower) on campus which happens to be in a lovely park right behind the building where my office is. Yesterday I had the chance to have a little tour of the tower. One of our grad students is minoring in music theory (her major is different but she does some things that are in ethnomusicology so it makes sense).
Anyway, this semester she’s been taking carillon lessons and recently had her final jury exam (it’s set up just like my piano class, with a final jury performance at the end of the semester)
So yesterday she had reserved the carillon for practice yesterday and invited me to join her. The playing chamber is about 50 feet off the ground, there are 65 bells (iirc). It was so cool! I had some scores on my phone so we picked a few pieces and I played the right hand part while she played the left hand part. It was amazing! Also, difficult because it’s hard to stay oriented on the keyboard, I kept playing one note too high (e.g., I played A when it should have been G) because I misinterpreted where C was. I think I could get used to playing the keyboard itself pretty quickly though. But not the foot pedals!
After that, she played part of her jury piece for me. It was beautiful, and so cool to experience!!
If you would like to see pics or hear a video of her playing, let me know and I’ll set up a private chat here to share it.
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Very cool, @shirokuro ! Was that something on your bucket list??
There's a carillon at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I think they have concerts periodically during the summer months.
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The carillon at the University of Chicago has regular summer concerts. Inside the church there is a video showing the player up in the tower. People bring chairs, snacks and drinks during nice weather to sit outside.
People bring chairs, snacks and drinks during nice weather to sit outside.
that sounds lovely!
Was that something on your bucket list??
No, not at all, only because I guess it never occurred to me that this was something I could do, that a "mere mortal" would even be allowed up there. I think the bell tower at the uni where I did my grad degree was more strictly guarded and outside visitors were not allowed! Here, they seem to be very much promoting it, which is great! I knew that you could take a class to learn how to play it, but before yesterday, I didn't know that they actually give tours and so on, and if you sign up, you can have a tour.
I am now actually thinking about looking into taking a class!
@bernard it was so, so cool!! More than I could have imagined!!!!
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I looked at the info for student who want to take a carillon class, here's the prereq info:
Pre-requisites:
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Ability to read treble and bass clef and familiarity with keyboard sufficient for quickly identifying notes and chords on the keyboard.
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Ability to climb stairs to reach university carillon
They should "ability to go down the stairs" because that was the hard part for me yesterday!
(As long I don't have to have surgery on my foot, I'm good....)
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