Sint-Rombouts Tower

My first week of carillon school has been a blast. On Wednesday, I was given a private tour of Sint-Rombouts Tower, which houses two carillons, including the primary recital instrument of the carillon school. The tower, which is attached to a cathedral, is by far the tallest structure in town (about 30 stories tall) and is accessible only by stairs--over 500 of them to get all the way to the top! On a clear day, one can see all the way to Antwerp to the north and Brussels to the south. Check out this great video from the tourism office for a look inside.

Although the tower in its current form is plenty tall at about 97 meters, it was actually supposed to be much taller at an imposing 167 meters, but its spire was never completed due to cost. This lends the structure somewhat stout proportions, but it's still striking (bell pun, anyone?) and unique this way. This illustration from the carillon school compares the current version to the original plan:

The first carillon one encounters on the ascent to the top is the historical carillon. I'll primarily address this instrument today and discuss the other carillon in another post. The historical instrument is made up of a variety of bells cast between the years 1460 and 1947. It isn't often played manually anymore, but my teacher and the director of the carillon school Koen Cosaert gave me a demonstration anyway. Notice how noisy the keyboard is!

If this historical instrument isn't usually played manually, then what is it used for? Its primary function is related to keeping track of time. The bells are hooked up to an entirely mechanical and automated mechanism that plays short tunes on each quarter and half-quarter hour, adding a lovely dimension to the soundscape of the city.

This whole practice of bells playing tunes on the hour has its origins in the 14th century. At that time, common people relied on tower clocks to know the time, so the bells played a number of strikes corresponding to the hour. When towers grew to have a handful of bells in them, the idea of a voorslag or a foresrike came about, where a small tune would proceed the hour strike, alerting people so they could pay attention to accurately count the number of strikes of the hour. This tradition is most familiar to many Americans today in the Westminster Chime, from England. In the Low Countries, however, the evolution was a little different. During the 16th century, large rotating drums, cast in brass, were developed to provide for the automated playing of more complex music than simple chant melodies. Due to their immense size and complexity, these drums (along with the clockwork) were the most expensive components of new carillons. This type of mechanism is still in use in the Sint-Rombouts Tower and others across Flanders to this day.

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"City authorities wished to provide the city with a maximum of music, and to keep the periods of intervening silence as short as possible... Thus, local residents were reminded every seven and a half minutes of the passage of time, day and night, year round. The music followed a natural hierarchy: that played on the hour was the longest, followed by that played on the half hour; the two remaining quarters were limited to a single musical phrase and the so-called klick ('click') between the four quarters was only a scale figure or some other fantasia."

--Luc Rombouts, Singing Bronze: A History of Carillon Music

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On Thursday, I had the immense pleasure of helping the city carillonneur Eddy Mariën reprogram the automated drum, along with my friend/classmate Simone and the tower technician. This was such an amazing opportunity! We reprogrammed only the hour tune, the longest one, to Beethoven's Ich Liebe Dich. It took about 5 hours in total, so you can only imagine how long it would take to reprogram the entire drum every month or 2 weeks, as they did in the olden days.

And the final result here!!