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PROVO -- The ringing sounds of the BYU Centennial Carillon Tower, or bell tower as most people call it, can carry in the wind for about a mile.
A few opening notes from "Come Come Ye Saints" are played by an automated system at the top and bottom of the hour, but any other song that rings out from the 90-foot tower actually come from a person up in the tower banging away on a wooden keyboard attached to the bells.
The instrument as a whole is called a carillon, the largest musical instruments in existence.
The BYU Centennial Carillon contains 52 bells ranging in size from 25 lbs to 4,730 lbs.
BYU music professor Don Cook is the head carillonneur. He not only climbs the 99-step spiral staircase up the bell tower before each devotional to play, he also hand picks three students who get paid to give daily concerts at noon.
"I think the biggest question people have about the carillon is simply, ‘how is it played?' They think it might be played with an ivory keyboard with fingers, but the idea of playing an instrument with the side of your hand is completely foreign to most people," said Cook.
Joseph Peeples is one of the students chosen to play in the bell tower. He's been working on his master's degree in music and studying organ playing, but when the opportunity came to expand his abilities he took the offer.
"When I first came to BYU… Dr. Cook asked me if I was interested in learning how to play (the carillon) and I kind of hesitantly said. 'Ok.' I didn't really know what it was and so we had a couple of lessons up here and then I started taking more lessons and just really loved it. It's fun, it's a great environment, great view. It's so fun that the whole campus can hear you play."
To play the carillon keyboard you make your hands into a fist and push down wooden handles that pull a wire, that wire moves the clappers that ring the bells. Some of the larger bells can also be played with your feet and Peeples says playing an intense song is a workout.
"You get some pieces that are just, you are going 90 miles a minute for you know, a few minutes or a few pages. You get done with it and you're just exhausted. You've got to take a break because you've put so much effort just into throwing these keys down and making all this sound especially when it's loud."
There are currently only 179 true carillons, with at least 23 bells, in North America; just one in Utah.
Peeples says he gets to choose what songs he plays on the carillon and he tries to keep it topical. He plays Christmas music in the fall, a few Halloween tunes in October and he even plays nursery rhymes when local elementary kids stop across the street at the Bean museum on field trips.
As Peeples and the other student carillonneurs graduate from BYU the next group of students will get the chance to climb the tower and play for the campus. The tower holds a special place for Peeples not only because of the hours he spent up there through both the heat and the cold, but it's also the place he proposed to his wife while watching the fireworks from the Stadium of Fire just down the street.
The current version of the bell tower was built in 1975 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of BYU. It contains 52 bells, totaling almost 27,000 pounds, and Cook says they're hoping to get two more bells in the future.
"For me the bell tower is a really important symbol of the university. It's become a visual symbol because it's a beautiful building and they use it on many publications, but it's also become something people hear and they recognize about BYU," said Cook.
E-mail: rjeppesen@ksl.com
