Profile: Miraculous Medal Shrine
St. Vincent's Seminary was established in 1867 in Germantown, PA, about eight miles northeast of Philadelphia. A chapel for the seminary on Chelten Avenue was completed in 1879 and a tower was added twenty years later. It is now known as the Miraculous Medal Shrine.
In the late 19th century, a Germantown Vincentian on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of St. Vincent de Paul visited the Church of Notre Dame in Buglose, France. He was sufficiently inspired by the 60-bell carillon there that he persuaded his home seminary and congregation to install a carillon at St. Vincent's in Germantown.
A carillon of 26 bells was ordered from the Paccard Bellfoundry of Annecy-le-Vieux, France, in 1900 and was installed the following spring. The bourdon weighed 3,300 pounds and sounded D. The compass was D, G, G# chromatic through g2. The carillon was played from a so-called "Maisonnave keyboard," one of several unsuccessful inventions of the late 19th century designed to enable the carillonneur--or any keyboardist-- to play from a piano-type keyboard with more ease than the traditional carillon keyboard offers. The carillon was silent during at least one of the following two decades due to the unreliability of Canon Maisonnave's machine.
Arthur Bigelow described the bells in 1946: "The bells of St. Vincent's represent the finest instrument cast in the 1800s. Furthermore, they are the first tuned carillon bells to be installed in the New World and are a perfect example of Old World craftsmanship, in this civilization of ours where expediency often dictates the amount of care we are to bestow upon an object. In the bells of Germantown we see united the beauty of tone with the beauty of form and decoration. Beautiful to hear, the bells are also beautiful to look upon. The designs of the bells, the inscriptions, the filigree work, the festoons about their waists, and the decorations about their shoulders, the exquisitely molded and cast bas-reliefs and high reliefs of the crucifixes and figures of saints, complete to the finest detail, all bespeak the love of the founder for his bells. Every bell is complete with its crown by which the bells are attached to their wooden beams."
In 1945, Arthur Bigelow began a proj-ect of restoring and enlarging the carillon. By 1946 he had rehung the bells and built a conventional carillon console. The Paccard foundry furnished two new bells (E and F#) in 1948 to fill in the gap in the lowest octave. Bigelow himself cast 19 treble bells for the instrument. The four-octave carillon with a keyboard compass of C, D, E, chromatic to c3 was dedicated in 1952.
Remy Müller was carillonneur at St. Vincent's from 1946 until his retirement in 1969. He wsa succeeded by Janet Dundore, who plays between Novena services every Monday evening. Three 30-minute playing segments are scheduled beginning at 5:30 and ending at 8:00.
