Yale Memorial Carillon - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Yale Memorial Carillon (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Harkness Carillon) is a carillon

Carillon

A carillon is a musical instrument that is typically housed in a free-standing bell tower, or the belfry of a church or other municipal building. The instrument consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells, which are played serially to play a melody, or sounded together to play a chord...

of 54 bells

Bell (instrument)

A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...

in Harkness Tower

Harkness Tower

Harkness Tower is a prominent Collegiate Gothic structure at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.The tower was constructed between 1917 and 1921 as part of the Memorial Quadrangle donated to Yale by Anna M. Harkness in honor of her recently deceased son, Charles William...

at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

in New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...

.

This carillon

Carillon

is a transposing instrument pitched in B. Its 54 bells are chromatically arranged from G (1.5 octaves below middle-C) to C (3 octaves above middle-C) for a total of 4.5 octaves. The lowest bell is an F♯ concert pitch, and weighs 13,400 pounds.http://www.yale.edu/carillon/aboutcarillon.htm Each bell is engraved with the year it was cast, the seal of the foundry, the seal of Yale, and the motto "For God, For Country, and For Yale."

Origins as a chime

Harkness Tower

, the Memorial Quadrangle that surrounds it, and the Harkness Memorial Chime were all part of a gift to Yale made by Anna M. Harkness

Anna M. Harkness

Anna M. Richardson was an American philanthropist.She married Stephen Vanderburgh Harkness, a harnessmaker of Cleveland, in 1851. They were parents of Charles William Harkness and Edward Stephen Harkness. Harkness senior invested with John D. Rockefeller and became the second-largest shareholder...

in memory of her son, Charles William Harkness

Charles W. Harkness

Charles William Harkness was the son of Stephen V. Harkness, an original investor in the company that became Standard Oil, and his second wife, the former Anna M. Richardson....

. Its original 10 bells (an instrument with a range of less than two octaves is referred to as a chime

Chime (bell instrument)

A carillon-like instrument with fewer than 23 bells is called a chime.American chimes usually have one to one and a half diatonic octaves. Many chimes play an automated piece of music. Prior to 1900, chime bells typically lacked dynamic variation and the inner tuning required to permit the use of...

- the Harkness Memorial Chime - rather than a carillon

Carillon

) were cast by the John Taylor Bellfounders

John Taylor Bellfounders

John Taylor & Co, formerly trading as Taylors, Eayre & Smith Ltd and John Taylor Bellfounders Ltd, and commonly known as Taylor's Bell Foundry or simply Taylor's, is the world's largest working bell foundry, located in Loughborough in the United Kingdom.The company manufactures bells for use in...

of Loughborough

Loughborough

Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, in 1921. They were installed in Harkness Tower

Harkness Tower

in 1922 and were first rung by John Taylor on June 9, 1922. The chimes were rung regularly by the university organist, Samuel H. Smith, until 1946 when this duty was assumed by a student, Elliot H. Kone '49. On his graduation in 1949, Kone formed a student organization, the Guild of Yale Bellringers, to continue with four rings per day.

Expansion from chime to carillon

In 1966, the instrument was expanded by the installation of an additional 44 bells, made possible by a gift from Florence S. Marcy Crofut and also cast by the John Taylor Bellfounders. The original chime had 10 pitches, which were named in concert pitch (F♯-G-A-B-C-C♯-D-E-F♯-G); the expansion kept the same bell as bourdon

Bourdon (bell)

The bourdon is the heaviest of the bells that belong to a musical instrument, especially a chime or a carillon, and produces its lowest tone....

, but the notes were re-named to make the bourdon a G (it is common practice to make carillons transposing instruments so that composers can assume a standard range). The new fully chromatic

Chromatic scale

The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...

4.5 octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

carillon was named the Yale Memorial Carillon to avoid showing preference to either the Harkness or the Crofut gift. At this point the Guild renamed itself the Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs.

Before the additional bells arrived, a practice carillon was installed in the tower to allow Guild members to learn the new instrument ahead of time. The practice carillon has a keyboard and pedalboard identical to those of the carillon, but the keys strike small tone bars instead of full-sized bells. The practice carillon allows Guild members to practice at a volume comparable to that of most other instruments instead of at the full volume of the carillon, which can be heard for several blocks. A second practice carillon was installed in April, 2006, adding greater flexibility to practicing schedules.

Yale tour guides like to perpetuate the myth that Harkness Tower

Harkness Tower

was once the tallest free-standing stone structure in the world, but needed to be reinforced because an eccentric architect poured acid down the walls to make the tower look older. However, the Washington Monument

Washington Monument

The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...

has been the tallest free-standing stone structure in the United States since it was completed, long before Harkness Tower

Harkness Tower

was built. Furthermore, it was the weight of the additional bells in 1966 that necessitated the reinforcement of the tower with a steel frame structure to carry the additional weight.

Current use

The instrument is currently rung by Guild members twice a day when classes are in session, and in the evening during the summer. From September to May, rings occur at 12:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., times chosen to avoid disturbing University classes. During the summer, the Guild hosts a concert series of guest carillonneurs on Friday evenings.

Every fall semester, a number of Yale undergraduate students who wish to learn how to play the carillon can audition ("heel") for a place in the Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs. After attending an introductory meeting, these students receive nine weeks of basic instruction on how to play the carillon. During these nine weeks they have access to Yale's practice carillons to prepare two audition pieces, which are performed for judges (current Guild members), along with a standardized exercise and sight reading. Each year, four to eight auditioners ("heelers") are admitted to the Guild and allowed - after further practice - to perform regularly on the carillon.

External links

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