Carillon
A carillon is a musical instrument consisting of bells. Carillons are usually in bell towers, and are made up of at least 23 bells. (If there are less than 23 bells, the instrument is called a chime.) A church in Michigan, called Kirk in the Hills, has 77 bells, the most of any carillon.
 | |
| Percussion instrument | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Percussion |
| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 111.242.2 (Sets of bells or chimes) |
The bells in a carillon are usually made to ring using a keyboard. It is similar to the one in a piano or organ, but is made up of wooden batons that are hit with closed fists instead of pressing them with fingers (see the picture on the left). Each baton is linked to a bell with a different pitch and makes it ring out. The bell with the lowest pitch is called the "bourdon", and many carillons have pedal keyboards for the largest bells. The instrument is very heavy, and the world's heaviest carillon, which is in a New York City church, weights 91 tonnes.
Not all carillons use a keyboard. Some of them are automated, meaning they play music without a human. They can be controlled using a clockwork mechanism, similar to the one in Big Ben, so that the music plays at certain times every day. Two examples of this kind of carillon are the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin and the Munttoren in Amsterdam. More recent carillons, such as the one in the Peace Tower in Ottawa, are computer-controlled.
Carillon Media
A carillonneur plays the 56-bell carillon of the Plummer Building, Rochester, Minnesota, US
The 56-bell carillon of Saint Joseph's Oratory, Montreal, Canada
Console of the carillon at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Maine-et-Loire, France
View of the bells and transmission system of the 49-bell Peace Carillon, Aarschot, Belgium
Front of the 16th-century clockwork and playing drum in the Sint-Catharijnetoren in Brielle, Netherlands
The range of a 49-bell carillon with a missing C♯ bell and additional B♭ bell in the bass[1]
The same range as the above image represented on a piano keyboard (with Middle C marked in yellow)
Oldest known depiction of a person playing a carillon, from De Campanis Commentarius (1612) by Angelo Rocca[2]
A Hemony carillon hangs in the tower of St. Lebuinus Church in Deventer, Netherlands; it was cast in Zutphen in 1647
The tower of St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, Belgium, where Jef Denyn generated worldwide interest in the carillon
A carillonneur plays Prelude No. 9 by Matthias Vanden Gheyn at St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, Belgium
Other websites
Media related to Carillons at Wikimedia Commons
- World Carillon Federation
- The Carillon. A history of the carillon with particular attention to the carillon and carillon music in the times of Johannes Vermeer.
- ↑ Brink 2017.
- ↑ Rombouts 2014, p. 76.