Notation for carillon and chime installations: audit and visualisation1 Michael Boyd This paper discusses the use of notation for recording the configurations of carillon and chime installations, which have been designed by the author for facilitating the production of visual depictions using computer software. Such notation, quasi-musical in format, has been devised with both the carillonneur (or chimer) and bell-historian in mind, hopefully satisfying two constituencies. The carillonneur, visiting a carillon for the first time, may wish to visualise the carillon keyboard as a means of preparing for a recital; the bell historian may wish to capture and record the configurations of both keyboard and instrument, and possible other playing mechanisms at a particular installation. In the latter case, the historian and bell enthusiast may also want a means of tracking, in some detail, the evolution of an installation from its inception to its present-day configuration. This is a particular interest of the author. It can sometimes appear that an appreciable body of carillon history has been lost due to the failure to accurately record modifications, augmentations, or extensive remodelling of carillon installations, particularly regarding the fate of carillon keyboards. The carillon keyboard and instrument design Carillon and chime keyboards embody a wealth of information on carillon culture and instrument design, particularly from the early 20th century onwards, in which the modern carillon was born and its growth and development nurtured. This early period witnessed considerable innovation in carillon building, fuelled in part by the rivalry between the two pre-eminent English bellfounders of the time: Taylors and Gillett & Johnston. This contest led to the production of a diverse range of impressive instruments consisting of fine-toned bells. These carillons came in various sizes: two-octave, three-octave, four-octave and larger, often employing the latest design and build techniques of their day. Significantly, the keyboards for these instruments were often bespoke, tailored for a particular ensemble of bells. This suggests to this author that the English founders, Gillett & Johnston in particular, took a holistic view of the installation. There was a definite regime of bespoke carillon design: bells were cast bearing their number within the ensemble (referred to by G & J as peal number), keyboards were designed and built to match. Complete installations would be set up within the foundry, to exhibit the bells and the transmission from the clavier to the clapper, before being delivered to their intended location. Consider the keyboards of the small two-octave instruments of this period. The configuration of the bespoke two-octave carillon keyboard by Gillett and Johnston (built 1932) as shown in Figure 1 shows characteristics of the carillon as a musical instrument which are consistent with its eventual accepted definition: the traditional clavier of wooden batons, chromatic, apart from where financial necessity has resulted in the omission of the two lowest bells with the least frequency of use, and one with a pedal board coupled to at least one octave of the manuals. From a musical point of view, and that of the carillonneur, any baton-keyboard configuration less than this is probably unsatisfactory from the point of view of exploiting the use of the pedals. The provision of the pedal board is important since it is this that really distinguishes a chime from a carillon. The smallest keyboard which allows the provision of a worthwhile pedal board (i.e., one of at least an octave of bells) is one of two-octaves in the manual. 1 © Michael Boyd, 2021. All rights reserved. 1 This configuration, in which the manuals have a one-to-one correspondence with the bells, results in a 23-bell carillon: one could argue that the carillon obtains its definition from this bespoke two- octave keyboard configuration, rather than one based on the number of bells per se. The argument is somewhat tautological perhaps, since Gillett and Johnston clearly took an integrative view of instrument design for these early installations: the keyboard was in turn designed and built to match their chromatic ensemble of tuned bells. The notion that these early bespoke instruments would later be remodelled or enlarged, with keyboards replaced by newer versions (with the older keyboards made redundant), may have surprised these founders at the time of the instrument’s design and inception. Whatever one’s view of these now established trends, it is surely of interest to historians and students of the carillon art that these early keyboard designs are recorded and understood. By extrapolation, baton chime keyboards fall within this orbit of interest. In the same way, modern keyboard configurations should also be recorded for future posterity. The motivation for this current study stems partly from this perceived need, and also a desire to efficiently notate existing installations for the purposes of visualising them. Notation for carillon and chime keyboards The notation put forward in this paper can be applied to a range of bell installation types. The use of shorthand notation for recording tower bell data for carillons and chimes, as well as their playing mechanisms and is of course nothing new, and in this regard this paper acknowledges the seminal work by Carl Zimmerman in this field. The Tower Bells database2 remains the most authoritative and well-researched source of information on tower bells throughout the world. In the Tower Bells database, the ranges of keyboards used for carillons and chimes are recorded using a particular format. The work presented in this paper here builds on this format, adapting and extending it for the purposes of visualisation and configuration audit, whilst suggesting alternative formats tailored towards particular instrument types. The author’s hope is that this work is seen as an additional tool for increasing our understanding of carillon installations and keyboards in particular. The convention used here is that the lowest C note on the keyboard is designated C0, unless there are notes below C0, in which case the suffix for those notes is omitted. Using this convention, a fully-chromatic two-octave carillon keyboard with a one-octave pedal board is notated3: C0.C2 & C0.C1 where the ‘.’ denotes an unbroken chromatic sequence between and including the two notes either side of it. However, we can take advantage of the default assumption that, for a carillon keyboard, the manuals and pedals are coupled, and that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the coupled keys, i.e., C0 in the pedal is coupled to the same note in the manual, and so on. Using a truncated notation, we can denote this keyboard C0.C2 & C1, where it is understood that full shorthand notation for the pedal board is in fact C0.C1. The ‘&’ symbol has been added here to denote a pedal board coupled to the manual keys. When we consider claviers with batons missing, the notation is developed further, so that a 23- bell carillon keyboard could be notated (“first style”): C0/D0/E0.C2 & C1, where ‘/’ denotes that 2 http://towerbells.org/ 3 The shorthand notation avoids the use of subscripts and superscripts, and the hash character ‘#’ is used in lieu of the sharp sign ♯, likewise lowercase ‘b’ is used for the flat sign ♭. All the symbols used can be easily produced by a computer keyboard. 2 one or more semitones are missing from the keyboard layout. In this case, the batons and pedals for C♯0 and D♯0 have not been included by the carillon builder. Alternatively, we can use the equivalent (“second style”) notation: C0.C2 ¬ {C#0, D#0} & C1 Here the ‘¬’ symbol denotes that the notes listed between the braces are missing from an otherwise chromatic sequence in the manual batons and the pedal board. This second style is preferable for describing carillon keyboard configurations, in that it emphasises a defining feature of the carillon, i.e., that it is a chromatic instrument. However, as we shall see, the first style is useful for notating certain complex carillon configurations. The second style notation also makes explicit the range of the keyboard, so we see from C0.C2 that the range is (2-0) = 2 octaves. The number of notes in both manual and pedal boards is readily calculated from this notation. For a fully chromatic sequence: (푁푢푚푏푒푟 표푓 표푐푡푎푣푒푠 푥 12 + 퐸푛푑푁표푡푒 − (푆푡푎푟푡푁표푡푒 − 1) where 퐸푛푑푁표푡푒 is the chromatic number in the octave of the end note in the sequence commencing at C, 푆푡푎푟푡푁표푡푒 that of the starting note in the sequence. Thus, the instrument with keyboard C0.C2 ¬ {C#0, D#0} & C1 has (2-0) *12 + 1 – (1-1) – 2 = 23 notes, taking into account the cardinality of the set of missing notes {C#0, D#0}, and using the convention that C has the sequence number of 1 in the octave. For a fully-chromatic 4-octave carillon keyboard C0.C4 & G1, the number of manual notes is readily computed as (4-0) x 12 + 1 – (1-1) = 49, whilst for the pedal board, temporarily expanding the truncated shorthand from G1 to C0.G1, we see that there are (1-0) x 12 + 8 – (1-1) = 20 pedal notes, using the chromatic sequence number 8 for the note G. Auditing carillon keyboards and installations The term ‘audit’ is meant here to convey the process of accurately recording the important details of a carillon or chime installation. Of course, what or what is not important may vary from one observer to another. For this author, the carillon or chime keyboard is of particular significance, since its form, configuration and action largely define the experience of the installation as a musical instrument, and when visiting an installation, it is the keyboard which is usually encountered first.