From the Close
A Harvest of New Dimensions

With the approach of this harvest season, the Cathedral finds itself ready to reap. The Gloria In Excelsis Tower nears completion, and the 53 bells of the Bessie J. Kibbey Carillon are already sounding a new music on the close.
O sing unto the Lord a new song;
We welcome Miss Bessie's beautiful bells, the lot of them stationed impressively on high, and their personable new master, Ronald Barnes, carillonneur. It is in a spirit of rejoicing and thanksgiving that all concerned may now pause, look admiringly upward, and listen attentively to this new music. The novelty will be wondrously engaging. Each will quickly find his or her favorite spot for listening, and in comparing with everyone else, new dimensions in conversation will be garnered. All will very soon arrange permission to go aloft and watch Mr. Barnes engage in his art, marveling at the considerable skill necessary to this new music making. New dimensions in observation and reaction will thereby be added. Also acquired will be some new dimensions in manners and custom, such as learning to respect the privacy of those individuals or small groups seated around the grounds listening to the bell music, and avoiding the starting or driving of nearby cars while the music is in progress. There are some other new dimensions brought into our lives by the music of the bells, however, and some clues to the understanding of them may be of assistance in making necessary adjustments to what will certainly prove a disquieting new voice to some, and a moving new voice to all. There is seldom neutrality where bells are concerned!

O God, my heart is ready, my heart is ready; I will sing, and give praise with the best member that I have.
A cup-shaped bell possesses singular harmonic dimensions in the overtone one octave and a minor third above its fundamental, and a humming tone one octave below its fundamental. The first is the keening note of melancholy and the second is a note of quiet agreement. No other struck, bowed, or blowed instruments share these tonal characteristics, and it is because of them that the unique disconcert of many bells sounded by many clappers loose strange sympathetic vibrations in men's souls that are unsettling and difficult to ignore. The troubling third and the humming-along-below-but-quietly-in-tune note of each bell, lasting in reverberation as many are struck quickly in succession, compound the problem of what the average ear comprehends as intonation. No matter how well-tuned the bells—and Miss Bessie's bells are as perfectly tuned by Paul Taylor as they are wondrously wrought by Frank Godfrey and the foundrymen—they must needs always sound strangely and disconcertingly attuned when in concert!
.... for he hath done marvelous things
The dimensions of this "most ingenious paradox" relate exactly to those inner dimensions referred to by the theologian and the philosopher. They are but dimly understood by any, including the artist. The artist, however, does attempt to define and measure them in himself, and then records or translates his findings in paint, in stone, in wood, in all materials, in all means of communication, and, perhaps most generally understood, in music. In all these many ways and through subtle means do the artists represented in the fabric and the program of the Cathedral constantly remind us of our own inner vibratory dimensions. The bells, God's tuning forks, can also sound those sympathetic vibratory dimensions, stirring us to look up and out, to listen high and low, without and within, and to be aware of our imperfections of intonation.