110 Bev. H. B. Haioeis [Feb. 7, 



Bell music comes in with the bell struck by a hammer and treated 

 as a musical note. 



We hear a good deal about the clapper bringing out the full tone 

 of the bell each time — but who wants that in music ? Do you require 

 a Sims Eeeves to bawl out each note at the top of his voice, or 

 Joachim to play fortissimo throughout ? But in fact the Briton exacts 

 the wheel of torture and the purgatorial clapper because, unlike the 

 Belgian, he has never considered his belfry in the light of a musical 

 instrument. 



Bell music comes in with the barrel, the carillon, clave9in, or 

 keyboard, and the suite of bells turned in semitones. 



The barrel is similar to the revolving barrel of a musical box ; it 

 is fitted all over with spikes which lift tongues at whose extremity is 

 the wire attached to the hammers up aloft, each acting on its own 

 bell. Our clock-chimes are thus played ; and in Belgium immense 

 revolving barrels fitted with thousands of spikes liberate a little flood 

 of music every ten minutes, and at the hour some melody with full 

 accompaniment, as from a pianoforte, floats over city towers and 

 ramparts — and why is not this oppressive? One bell is often too 

 much for us, how should we endure sixty ? Better far than one ; it is 

 the one or two, ding, dong, that wear out the tympanum and ruin 

 house property. Substitute for this little flights of music, and the ear 

 is charmed and recreated. 



We have to learn the use of small bells mixed with the large 

 We deal only with heavy peals of ten or twelve. But substitute a 

 suite of thirty, ranging from two or ten tons to a few pounds or 

 hundredweights, and divide the music between them, using no more of 

 your big bells than you would of your bass notes on the piano or organ 

 and how difierent the result ! Again, it is noise, not music, which the 

 Briton insists upon in his bells, and when he has got it he abuses it. 



But the triumph of bell music is only reached with the apj)lica- 

 tion of the clavegin or keyboard. In Belgium the keyboard consists 

 of jutting pegs, tones and semitones, ranged like white and black 

 keys, one above the other, with a row of pedals for the feet acting on 

 the big bells. A smart blow is needful to bring out the full tone, as 

 the carilloneur sits stripped to his shirt, and proceeds with hands in 

 gauntlets to manipulate his mighty scales. The English and Belgian 

 keyboards have distinct qualities. The English machinery of Gillett 

 and Bland substitutes for pegs, keys ; and the lightness of touch rests 

 with the player. A lady can play the heaviest suite with ease, for the 

 instant the hammer drops it is lifted again by independent machinery, 

 and all that the pressed key does is to let oft' the hammer as by a hair 

 trigger. In the Belgian clavecin the peg has to lift with appropriate 

 leverage as well as to liberate the hammer — hence the heaviness of the 

 Belgian touch ; but musically the Belgian clave9in, rude as it is, 

 bears the palm, for the Belgian carilloneur can impart by his stroke 

 the most delicate pp or emphatic ff ; he can produce at will wonderful 

 crescendos and decrescendos, while of course he who only liberates a 



