Carillon News

A new carillon on the North Campus of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will be dedicated during a special ceremony on Thursday, October 19 at 9:00 p.m. During the spring and summer, the instrument is to be installed in the new and modern tower designed by the late architect Charles Moore of Austin, Texas. The dedication ceremony is planned to include music played on the new carillon and music performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Band, by itself and with the carillon. In addition to the music, there will be special tower lighting effects and fireworks.

The Lurie Carillon and Lurie Tower are named after Robert Lurie and were donated by his widow, Ann, of Chicago. Robert Lurie held two degrees in engineering from the University of Michigan. Royal Eijsbouts of The Netherlands cast the 60 bells (bourdon G of six tons) to a modified Hemony profile. Thirty-eight of the bells will also have MIDI capability. A new practice keyboard will be installed in a nearby building.

Two works for carillon have been commissioned for the dedication. The commissions went to University of Michigan composer William Albright and to Mannheim Steamroller composer and director, Chip Davis, a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music. To help celebrate the event, there is also a carillon composition competition for University of Michigan student composers with cash prizes. The winning student pieces will be performed at special concerts following the dedication.

Honorary membership in the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America was conferred on Ronald Barnes at the 1995 Congress in Princeton, New Jersey. David Hunsberger nominated Mr. Barnes for this honor with the following tribute.

Born and brought up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mr. Barnes believes his parents took him as a young child to hear Anton Brees dedicate the carillon at First Plymouth Congregational Church. Fifteen years later, he studied organ with Myron Roberts, the church's organist, who one day asked if he would consider learning to play the carillon, since Mary Guest, the woman then playing, planned to move away.

Young Ronald ascended the tower to watch her play, and remembers that she played melodies only, and only in the bottom two octaves, grasping the keys chime-style. When he asked her why she did not also use the higher notes she replied that they didn't work, and sure enough, when he tried one it would not move. Only a few days later, when he and his older brother Bryce actually made their way into the bell chamber (in those days a hazardous climb indeed) did he realize that all those notes had bells attached to them.

The two young men carried twelve bushel baskets full of dead pigeons, droppings, and other dirt from the tower. They cleaned and lubricated the playing action, disassembling some of it. When they had finished, Ronald went up the following Sunday to play. Since he owned no carillon music, he simply played scales up and down the compass. The phone immediately began to ring, with neighborhood people wanting to know when the church had gotten the new bells. So far as he can determine, the last person to have played the small bells on that carillon had been Anton Brees at the dedicatory recitals a decade and a half earlier!

At the end of World War II Mr. Barnes served in the US Navy in Japan during the occupation, on a destroyer tender as a specialist working with navigational instruments, and later as a helmsman on a destroyer. Afterwards he used the GI Bill to earn a Master of Arts degree in musicology at Stanford University, where for his thesis he wrote a study of the carillon preludes of Matthias van den Gheyn. He attended his first GCNA congress in 1948 at Ann Arbor, where he, Theophil Rusterholz, and Bertram Strickland played their advancement recitals. Following the Congress he spent the summer in Ottawa with Robert Donnell, which was to be his only formal study of the carillon.

In 1951 he accepted an appointment to play the large new Taylor carillon in Lawrence, Kansas, which he says was the finest in the world at the time. While on the Kansas University faculty he also taught harpsichord and cared for the university's instrument collection. In 1963 he again accepted an appointment to play a brand new Taylor carillon, which he again thought was the best carillon in the world, this time at the Washington Cathedral.

Finally, in 1982 he returned to California to preside over the Class of 1928 Carillon at Berkeley. Under his supervision the Berkeley instrument has been enlarged once and improved several times.

He has been host of three congresses, one at each of his towers beginning in Kansas in 1956, and will be one of the hosts, along with his successor, at the 1998 congress in Berkeley. He was President of the Guild during part of the 1960s, and served for seven years during the 1950s as editor of the Bulletin.

It was Mr. Barnes' personal encouragement that led several of our most important composers, among them Roy Hamlin Johnson, John Pozdro, and Gary White, to develop an interest in the carillon. He has played pivotal roles in beginning and nurturing the carillon careers of some of our most distinguished players, including Milford Myhre, Richard Strauss, and Daniel Robins. He has written provocatively and with penetrating insight several times for the Bulletin, working to set new standards for quality of performance, choice of repertory, and sophistication in design and construction of instruments. But there is no doubt in my mind that the contribution that overshadows all others is his contribution to our instrument's musical literature. Dating back to his earliest years at Kansas and deepening during the years, the flow of compositions in his mature years has made our lives as performers increasingly worth living.

After 13 years of service, Ronald Barnes retired from his position as University Carillonist at the University of California, Berkeley, on October 15, 1995. Jeff Davis has been appointed Acting University Carillonist.

The first Eurocarillon Festival took place in Bruges and Damme, Belgium, on September 1-3, 1995. It was organized by the two cities and the newly founded European carillon organization, Eurocarillon, which consists of representatives from Portugal, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, England, and The Netherlands.

On the first two days several concerts were given on the carillon hung in the high Bruges town hall belfry overlooking the central market square. The 47-bell instrument with a six-ton bourdon was cast in 1748 by Joris Dumery and renovated in 1969 by Eijsbouts. A four-hands rendition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons given by Abel Chavez and Anna Maria Reverté was one of the festival's high points. During another concert Aimé Lombaert and Boudewijn Zwart's performance was seen on video and heard on loudspeakers in one of the town hall's rooms where it was coordinated with the simultaneous playing of a percussion ensemble. The closing concerts were held on the town hall carillon of the nearby port of Damme which was reached by a boat trip through a picturesque landscape.

The purpose of Eurocarillon is to strengthen the position of the carillon and the carillonneur in European cultural life. The organization will serve as an important showcase of European carillon culture. Each year a special Eurocarillon concert featuring the same program will be given on the same day at the same time in all of Eurocarillon's member cities, and a Eurocarillon festival will be held in one of the member countries. Discussions are currently underway to hold festivals this year in Lyons, next year in Barcelona, and in 1998 in Amsterdam.