Introduction

Family admiring Baird Carillon's 12-ton bell

The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan is rich in public bell instruments. The campus of the University of Michigan there has two carillons, and there is another bell tower with a seventeen-bell chime located in the historic district. Such instruments are rare in the United States. When I arrived in Ann Arbor for a summer seminar on the role of music in everyday life, I immediately singled out these bells as an interesting topic for research. This project is a result of that summer.

The project centered on two of the three instruments mentioned above: the Baird Carillon on campus and the Kerrytown Chime in the Ann Arbor Historic District. I immediately saw a number of interesting similarities and differences between the two instruments. As instruments, they were designed in similar ways, with an array of bells that are rung by hammers connected to a keyboard. However, they seemed to function very differently in the local music community. The Baird Carillon was University property, and students and professors of carillon used it as a part of the university's carillon course. The Kerrytown Chime, on the other hand, was not affiliated with the university, and at certain times, anyone from the public could come and play a song on it. The goal of my project was to compare the two instruments and analyze their differing contributions to Ann Arbor's musical landscape by looking at the instruments' respective pools of performers, repertories, and performance spaces.

I decided I would use several different methods to gather information about each instrument and its interaction with the community. First, I would perform my own field work and observations at carillon and chime performances. Second, I would interview individuals in positions of authority at each instrument about the interplay between the community and the bells. Third, I would find written primary sources about the instruments, newspaper articles for instance, which might give me some historical perspective on their role. Finally, I would look for written secondary sources for more historical perspective and any other research that had been done.

Although I was not able to find any books or useful secondary sources, I did locate some primary sources, an my fieldwork went well. My findings are laid out in the subsequent sections on the site map.