“Basically we want to teach you. We want to show you the ropes,” says Dylan F. Perese ’17. The ropes Perese refers to are actually cables: heavy-duty ones with the strength to suspend the 25-tons-worth of bells that he and the other members of The Lowell House Society of Russian Bell Ringers play every Sunday.
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To become a Russian bell ringer, students must pass a comp, which begins in October. The comp process itself is fairly simple and hinges upon reliable attendance, according to club leaders. No previous experience necessary.
In order to play the bells at 1 p.m. every Sunday, compers are expected to show up 15 minutes earlier, even in inclement weather. “That’s the deal-breaker for a lot of people,” Perese says. “It gets pretty cold in the winter and pretty windy.”
On any given Sunday, the number of people in the bell tower varies. “Last Sunday we had about 30 people up there, but we’ve had as few as two or three,” Perese says. Sometimes a conductor directs the group to keep everyone in rhythm.
Together the ringers play anything from traditional Russian peals to top 40 hits to seasonal classics such as “Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving Song”.
“Russian bell ringing is an art,” Lowell House Co-Master Diana L. Eck says. “It’s this piling up of sound. It’s much more like jazz because it’s improvisational.”
The bells create sound in a way similar to the strings-and-hammer system within a piano. Metal cords are threaded through different levels, and ringers pull on ropes to trill the bells.
First-time ringers can try their hands at any bell in the tower except for “Mother Earth,” the biggest bell, the crown jewel: it is close to nine feet in diameter and weighs over 13 tons. Instead, compers can test out “Mother Earth”’s resonant peers, whose names include “Sacred Oil” and “Famine, Pestilence and Despair.”
Once the comp is complete, new members receive keys to the bell tower on Russian Orthodox Easter.
“We’re probably one of the more inclusive student groups on campus in the sense that anyone is welcome to com e up with us, It’s a really great group of people,” Perese says. “It’s incredibly rewarding to be part of a larger religious and musical and cultural tradition.”
