Singing Bronze: A History of Carillon Music
- Author: Rombouts, Luc
Book
$54.25Contents
- Introduction
- PART 1 – BELL CULTURES IN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES
- Chapter 1 – The magic of old bells
- A fruit with pith
- A world of sounds
- Made in China
- Jingle Bells
- Bellmen
- Chapter 2 – The time of God
- The daily call to prayer
- Europe of Bells
- The appearance of the medieval bell
- Church doctrine and popular belief
- Tolling for political ends
- Chapter 3 – The time of man
- A day in the city
- Tolling for special events
- New bell casting techniques
- The bell-founder in action
- Chapter 4 – The bondage of time
- Clocks in monasteries and cathedrals
- Measuring time in the open air
- The signal becomes music
- PART 2 – THE OLD CARILLON ART
- Chapter 5 – A new musical instrument
- Making music with bells
- The terms beiaard and carillon
- Further development of the new musical instrument
- The first founders of carillon bells
- Chapter 6 – Carillon music in a divided land
- Why in the Low Countries?
- Good and bad songs
- Bells as commodity
- The oldest carillon books
- Chapter 7 – Pure bells
- A blind nobleman with a keen sense of hearing
- François Hemony
- The Hemonys’ secret
- Pieter Hemony
- The Hemony legacy
- Chapter 8 – Carillon music at the court
- The successors of the Hemonys
- The carillons of Peter the Great
- Carillons for the young Prussians
- Royal extravagance in Portugal
- Chapter 9 – The Bach of the carillon
- Peter Vanden Gheyn, monk and entrepreneur
- Matthias Vanden Gheyn, virtuoso carillonneur
- Andreas Jozef Vanden Gheyn, talented bell-founder
- The descendants of the Vanden Gheyns
- Chapter 10 – Panorama of the old carillon art
- The bells
- The automatic mechanism
- Manual playing
- The carillonneurs
- The carillon repertoire
- The audience
- The fate of the French Low Countries
- PART 3 – THE NEW CARILLON ART
- Chapter 11 – National Carillon
- Carillon music riding the waves of politics
- The confiscation of bells in the Southern Low Countries
- Gradual restoration of the bell stock
- The Northern Republic in the French era
- Napoleon’s bell
- Chapter 12 – The carillon as romantic symbol
- The carillon, an old instrument
- Literary interest in bells and carillons
- The carillon at the service of nationalism
- Chapter 13 – In search of the sound of the past
- Bell-founding in the 19th century
- Innovations in keyboard construction
- Rediscovery of the art of bell tuning
- Chapter 14 – A soul in peace, among the stars
- A carillonneur with an interest in technique
- Enchanting Monday evenings
- The vision of the master
- An American much interested in carillons
- Chapter 15 – The broken bells of Flanders
- War rages over Belgium
- The voice of fallen carillons
- Carillon war in the Netherlands
- Bells of victory
- Chapter 16 – Memorial bells
- A school for carillonneurs
- Carillon sounds across the Atlantic
- Rockefeller and his Belgian carillonneurs
- The race for bigger and heavier
- Contours of a new carillon culture
- New carillons in other parts of the world
- Chapter 17 – New carillon construction in the Old Country
- Belgian and English influence in the Netherlands
- Protectionist reflexes in Belgium
- Malaise among the Belgian bell-founders
- Belgian carillons in the United States
- The Mechelen carillon school during the interwar period
- Chapter 18 – ‘The bells fight with us’
- Nazi bells
- Carillon music in occupied territory
- The confiscation of bells in Europe
- Liberation
- Chapter 19 – Dutch manufacture versus Carillon Americana
- The return of the bells
- Reconstruction in the Low Countries
- A carillon without bells
- Carillon battle in the Vatican pavilion
- Chapter 20 – Innovations in the Old and the New World
- American Beauty
- The American carillon movement
- Acid rain in Europe
- Using the computer
- Carillon music in the East
- Chapter 21 – Panorama of the new carillon art
- The carillons of the world
- Carillon organizations
- Carillonneurs and their audience
- The diversity of carillon music
- A future for the carillon
- Sources and acknowledgements
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Origin of the illustrations
- Indices