The carol of the bells

Two Fridays ago, on the only holiday that centers around children taking candy from strangers (truly a great phenomenon) I was fortunate enough to meet one of the most delightful people on Duke's campus. His name is Sam Hammond, and he has been making his presence subtly known since 1965. In fact, I'll bet that you've probably heard him nearly every day while you've been here. How? you ask. The answer, my friends, lies within the bells.

Hammond is none other than Duke's official carillonneur. Those bells you hear every day at five are not automated like those you might hear at Chapel Hill or N.C. State (another thing to add to your list of things we do better). And when I said that the answer lies within the bells, I meant literally. That is, every weekday at 5 p.m. and every Sunday before and after the 11 a.m. chapel service, Hammond plays in a small room essentially inside the carillon, directly beneath the fifty stationary bells that comprise it.

Hammond is only the second person to ever hold the position of being the official carillonneur. When I asked how he got into this position, he said he learned how to play in 1965 as an undergraduate from graduate students. He's been here ever since-talk about a commitment to Duke. He graduated and stayed, working first in a research lab and eventually becoming a librarian; he's currently a librarian for the Special Collections in Perkins.

I thought that Hammond played in a room off the ground floor of the Chapel. But contrary to my expectations, he led me into a small, circular elevator with a brass-type cage, which we took past numerous stories of stone, and exited out the other side onto a catwalk running the width of the hollow bell-tower to look down at the carillon.

The instrument itself is enormous: the fifty bells range from more than six feet (12 people would fit inside easily) to about six inches in diameter. I was surprised to find that the bells in the carillon are actually stationary-when it's played, the only part that moves is the arm of the metal clapper attached mechanically via a lever to the key, a wooden peg about a square inch around. This kind of dashed all my hopes and dreams of becoming a chapel bell ringer. I thought it might be kind of fun to swing up and down on the ropes like the ringers in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The entire instrument, however, is purely mechanical. To play it, there are two rows of wooden pegs on the instrument (the upper row is sharps and flats, and the bottom row is whole notes) with a row of foot pedals that connect to the lower row. For you pianists out there, there are fewer notes than on a piano, but playing the notes is a great deal more physically demanding-you have to actually hit the keys with your fist to make them sound, and some of the clappers for the larger bells weigh well over 100 pounds. Some carillonneurs even wear pads on their hands like it's a sport which is a fair analogy. Hammond, who says he likes to have greater control over how hard he hits the keys, does not wear them.

Because it was Halloween, Hammond picked festively spooky tunes-if you listen, he themes his music based on the holiday or time of year. This is great for those of you holed up in Bostock who have trouble remembering what time of the year it is. He's also open to suggestions, though he chuckled when I asked him whether he played a lot of modern day hits, saying that he'll always take requests but he can't always promise he'll play them if he can't adapt it well or play it with feeling. That being said, he adapted one of my favorite tunes quite easily-when I mentioned that I had thoroughly enjoyed his Harry Potter piece on the previous Halloween, he whipped it out and added it to the day's selection.

So when you hear the bells today at 5 p.m., you'll now know it's not a machine or random people swinging on ropes in our bell tower-it's Sam Hammond, University Carillonneur, sitting in that little room high above us.