The Lowell House Bell Ringers come from Harvard University - - PDF document

SLIDE 1

The Lowell House Bell Ringers come from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, USA. The story

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the Lowell House bells begins at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. The monastery dates to the 13th century, and held a set

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eighteen bells cast between 1682 and 1907. These bells included the Bolshoy

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Blagovestnik bell, known at Harvard as Mother Earth. It was cast by the Finlandsky Foundry in 1890 and weighs 13 tons. In the 1900’s there was an American scholar and archeologist named Thomas Whittemore, who specialized in Byzantine studies. He held a personal relationship with Mustafa Kamal Ataturk and participated in the restoration

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the Hagia Sophia mosaics. As churches and monasteries across Russia closed in the 1920’s, Whittemore heard that the Danilov bells in Moscow were in danger

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being destroyed. He contacted his friend Charles Crane, a wealthy businessman who had inherited his fortune as the son

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a plumbing magnate. Crane turned from business to diplomacy, philanthropy, and travel. He had traveled across Russia and loved Russian culture. In 1930, he purchased the bells and donated them to Harvard University, where Lowell House was under construction. Designs for a clocktower similar to Independence Hall in Philadelphia were adapted for a bell tower instead. When the bells arrived at Lowell, they were raised up by railroad ties until they reached the height

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the tower, and so we say that there was a Crane big enough to buy the bells in Charles Crane, but not a crane big enough to lift the bells. The famous bell ringer from Moscow Konstantin Saradzhev supervised the installation

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the Danilov bells at Lowell House. Saradzhev was renowned for his aural acuity, as he was able to perceive the smallest differences in tone and to recognize every bell in Moscow. With this expertise, Saradzhev surveyed the eighteen bells at Lowell House and determined that

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seventeen were the Danilov bells. The mismatched bell was moved across the Charles River to Harvard Business School. Saradzhev hoped to play his bell compositions at Harvard, but based

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medical reasons and his eccentric character, he clashed with the Harvard administration. He was dismissed from the project and returned to Moscow. At first, after the installation, people resented the cacophony

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inexperienced bell ringers at the Lowell bells, but as years passed, Harvard students learned to ring and to love the Russian bells. In 1983, in anticipation

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the 1000­year anniversary

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Christianity in Russia, the Soviet Union returned the Danilov Monastery to the Russian Orthodox Church. The monastery belfry was fit with a set

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15 bells saved from Soviet destruction, but these bells were damaged and mismatched, so the monks set their minds

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• btaining

their

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set

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bells. When President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow in 1988, he was asked about getting the bells back to the monastery. In 2000, the American ambassador to Russia, a Harvard alumnus, was also asked during a visit to the monastery about sending the bells to their home. For various reasons, such as concerns

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cost and damage to Lowell House, these efforts failed to bear fruit.

SLIDE 2

The final push to return the bells came in 2003, when Father Superior Alexei

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Danilov Monastery wrote directly to Diana Eck and Dorothy Austin, masters

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Lowell House. Diana, a professor

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religion, and Dorothy, a minister at Harvard's Memorial Church, were very receptive towards the monastery's request. So in December 2003, in the middle

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a Boston blizzard, a monastery delegation, including Father Superior Alexi and Father Roman, came to Lowell House and for the first time in decades they played the bells as they were meant to be played. That visit marked the beginning

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a close relationship between Lowell House and the Danilov Monastery. The following year, Lowell House sent a group

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student bell ringers to Russia to train with Father Roman and

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bell ringers in the Kremlin, the beginning

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a tradition for Lowell bell ringers to train in Russia. Most importantly, after a study found it was feasible to remove the bells from Lowell House, an agreement was reached that Lowell House would return the

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bells to the monastery, who would in return pay for a replacement set

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bells to be cast and given to Lowell House. The expensive bell exchange was paid for by the generosity

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Link

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Times Foundation, an

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founded by Viktor Vekselberg dedicated to recovering lost Russian cultural artifacts. With funding secured, the exchange proceeded quickly. In 2006, a Harvard delegation visited five Russian bell foundries to learn about the process

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forging a bell, and ultimately decided the Vera Foundry in Voronezh to create the replacement set. In 2007, a group

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Russian bell masters came to Lowell House to analyze and profile the

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bells to aid in the casting

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the new set, which was completed in spring 2007. Shortly after, the replacement set arrived in Lowell, and

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July 8, 2008, the exchange

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the bells was finally complete. Harvard President Drew Faust

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transferred

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the

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bells to the Danilov Monastery while the Link

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Times Foundation signed

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the new bells to Lowell House. So today at Harvard, we bell ringers (or “Klappermeisters” as some call us) are in the very unique position

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having a bell tower with a full set

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Russian bells that, first, have been engineered to fit a Western scale and, second, ring peals and melodies according to the whims

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the ringers. We ring every Sunday from 13:00 to 13:30. We also ring the bells at important moments

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university life; for instance graduation day and housing day (when we welcome

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new students). We play them in

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annual performance

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Tchaikovsky’s 1812

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Finally we have a few less serious traditions, such as ringing 13 strikes at midnight

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Halloween.

SLIDE 3

Originally in the 1930s, the bells were played at arbitrary times, and the students, unaccustomed to these bells, would protest by banging pans, heaving alarm clocks

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windows, and even

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a simultaneous toilet flushing. Since then, many students have grown fond

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the bells, and several formed the Klappermeisters tradition,

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which we are the descendants. In these earlier days, the ringers did not exactly know how to ring the bells. They tried ringing melodies but

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very few would work, such as the Harry Potter theme song. Today

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ringing has been enriched and is usually

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three different types: Western melodies, Russian peals,

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bell jams. Since 2008, we now have a two

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western scale

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the bells. We can ring famous melodies and even complicated harmonies. We play

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favorite pop tunes, school anthems and classical music. Some

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current favorites are Bach prelude number 1 in C major, the beginning

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Beethoven’s 5

th

, the song Hallelujah and the Scottish tune Loch Lomond. The bell exchange also meant that we came into contact with the Russian zvon tradition. As Diana Eck said: when Father Roman came to perform

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the bells “He brought a sound from those bells that we had never heard before.” Over the years we have learned from him and Russian bell ringers, and now play Russian peals every week. For instance, we always start with

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“Descending Peal” and end with

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version

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“Beautiful Rostov.” Finally every week we ring bell jams: these are mostly improvisation, and allow visitors to the tower to try the bells for the first time. We welcome any visitor to come watch

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try the bells. After the final ring, together we feel the vibrations

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“Mother Earth” (as we call the Bolshoy bell) and share the bell’s history. This sharing

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the tradition is part

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what makes it so special for us. Since the bell exchange, both Harvard and the Danilov Monastery have kept the cultural exchange alive. Every year we alternate sending

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receiving a delegation

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ringers to ring the

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set. We

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have just concluded a trip to Russia to learn about the bell tradition from Father Roman. We hope this tradition continues for many years to come; next year will mark the tenth year jubilee

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the bell exchange, so a celebration is in

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