MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, AUTOMATIC. 



Gil 



egg, and, while it contains the necessary works 

 for a repeater, it has the requisite mechanism 

 for a religious scene. There is a representa- 

 tion of the tomb of Christ, with the Roman 

 sentinels on guard. On pressing a spring, the 

 stone is rolled away from the mouth of the 

 tomb, the sentinels fall down, and the holy 

 women enter the sepulchre. Immediately a 

 solemn chant is played, and its muffled sweet- 

 ness gives the effect of its coming from unseen 

 depths. At its conclusion the various figures 

 return to their first positions. 



Carillon or Mechanical Chimes. This is a series 

 of bells fixed to a frame and struck by ham- 

 mers from without the bell. A key-board at- 

 tachment is usually provided, but, owing to 

 the fact that carillon-playing is a matter of no 

 small physical exertion, it is usual to build a 

 clock-work machinery analogous to the bar- 

 rel-organ. The power is applied by means of 

 a heavy weight instead of a crank or spring. 

 The barrel is pricked for various tunes, gener- 

 ally seven or eight, a change being effected by 

 shifting the barrel slightly. The pins inserted 

 in the pricked spaces of the barrel come in 

 contact at the proper moment with levers 

 which raise the hammers and release them to 

 fall upon the bell at the moment when the pin 

 on the barrel quits the lever. The application 

 of this principle on the large scale necessary 

 for carillon-ringing is fraught with difficulties 

 which the rude and unscientific system still 

 prevalent on the Continent quite fails to meet. 

 The trouble lies in the weight to be overcome 

 in lifting the striking hammer. As the pins on 

 the barrel have to take this whole weight, it 

 is necessary that they should be very strong. 

 The barrel thus becomes so cumbrous and 

 expensive an affair as to add very much to 

 the difficulties of arranging a large carillon- 

 machine. In machines made under the systems 

 of the past, the method of striking the note did 

 not conduce to precise accuracy in the time of 

 sounding, and correct time was greatly inter- 

 fered with. This was caused by the greater 

 resistance offered by the larger hammers while 

 the barrel was driven by the same uniform 

 weight for large and small. The word carillon 

 is derived from the Italian word quadriglio, or 

 quadrille. A dreary kind of dance-music, of 

 which many specimens still survive, seems un- 

 der this name to have come from Italy, and 

 been widely popular throughout Europe in the 

 sixteenth century. The airs, or portions of 

 them, were hummed, or whistled, or sung on 

 all possible occasions in the home, on the 

 street, in the various places of amusement ; and 

 as the town bells, whether in the cathedral or 

 the market-house belfry, were regarded as pop- 

 ular institutions, it is possible and even highly 

 probable that the quadriglio was the first kind 

 of musical tune ever arranged for a peal of 

 bells hence the name. In the seventeenth 

 century carillons were found in all the princi- 

 pal towns and cities in the Low Countries. Up 

 in every well-stored belfry in Belgium there is 



a small room devoted to a large revolving bar- 

 rel exactly similar in principle to that of the 

 music-box, but at what date it was first intro- 

 duced in place of the flesh -and-blood carillon- 

 neur is difficult to ascertain. The most cele- 

 brated carillon or machine chimes in the world 

 are in the Halles or market tower at Bruges. 

 In the belfry are forty-eight bells, some of 

 them weighing singly six tons. They are 

 played upon every quarter-hour by means of 

 an immense copper cylinder or barrel, commu- 

 nicating with the clock, and weighing about 

 nine tons. Its surface is pierced by 30,500 

 square holes, so that an infinite variety of airs 

 may be set upon it by merely shifting the iron 

 pegs that lift the hammer. A Latin inscrip- 

 tion indicates that this machine was the work 

 of Antoine de Hondt in 1743. The carillon 

 which it replaced was very ancient, but wheth- 

 er played by man-power or mechanical is 

 unknown. The finest carillons on a large 

 scale in the Continental cities are one at Ant- 

 werp, of 65 bells; Malines, 44 bells; Ghent, 

 48 bells; Tournay, 42 bells; Boulers, 39 bells; 

 and Louvain, 40. England has borrowed the 

 idea of carillon-ringing, but has invented and 

 applied principles that surmount most of the 

 difficulties and drawbacks of the Continental 

 machinery. The principle on which the im- 

 provements are effected is the introduction of 

 a revol ving cam- wheel beneath each lever w hich, 

 continually turning, raises the lever the mo- 

 ment the hammer has struck the bell, so that 

 the latter is promptly brought into position 

 again for striking, and the action of the pins on 

 the barrel, instead of being a lifting and letting- 

 off action, is merely a letting off, the whole of 

 the lifting being done by the cam-wheels. As 

 one of the consequences, the same note can be 

 struck rapidly in succession where before it 

 was impossible. There is in the old town of 

 Boston, England, a carillon of forty-four bells 

 which plays twenty-eight tunes ; about twenty 

 others are erected in churches and cathedrals 

 in Dublin, Greenfield, Oldham, Worcester, 

 Rochdale, Reading, Leek, Shoreditch, Hoi- 

 worthy, Hampstead, etc. The town hall at 

 Manchester has one of twenty- one bells; and 

 there is also one in the town hall at Bradford. 

 Nearly if not all the carillon machinery in 

 England was invented and built by the firm of 

 Gillet and Bland, of Croydon, and so great 

 have been the improvements under their hands 

 that a machine playing eight bells needs to be 

 only three feet long, two feet wide, and three 

 feet nine inches high. The music-barrel is ten 

 inches in diameter and fourteen Cinches long; 

 the spikes on the barrel for letting off the heavi- 

 est hammers are only one sixteenth of an inch 

 square. When we compare the delicacy of 

 this machinery, which usually stands under a 

 glass case and looks like the magnified works 

 of a music-box, with the prodigious effects it 

 produces, we can not help feeling convinced 

 that the time is at hand when every chime 

 of bells will be fitted with this beautiful appa- 



