Yale Memorial Carillon

The Yale Memorial Carillon (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Harkness Carillon) is a carillon of 54 bells in Harkness Tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

This carillon is a transposing instrument pitched in B. Its 54 bells are chromatically arranged from G (1.5 octaves below middle-C) to C (3 octaves above middle-C) for a total of 4.5 octaves. The lowest bell is an F♯ concert pitch, and weighs 13,400 pounds.[1] Each bell is engraved with the year it was cast, the seal of the foundry, the seal of Yale, and the motto "For God, For Country, and For Yale."

Harkness Tower, the Memorial Quadrangle that surrounds it, and the Harkness Memorial Chime were all part of a gift to Yale made by Anna M. Harkness in memory of her son, Charles William Harkness. Its original 10 bells (an instrument with a range of less than two octaves is referred to as a chime - the Harkness Memorial Chime - rather than a carillon) were cast by the John Taylor Bellfounders of Loughborough, England, in 1921. They were installed in Harkness Tower in 1922 and were first rung by John Taylor on June 9, 1922. The chimes were rung regularly by the university organist, Samuel H. Smith, until 1946 when this duty was assumed by a student, Elliot H. Kone '49. On his graduation in 1949, Kone formed a student organization, the Guild of Yale Bellringers, to continue with four rings per day.

In 1966, the instrument was expanded by the installation of an additional 44 bells, made possible by a gift from Florence S. Marcy Crofut and also cast by the John Taylor Bellfounders. The original chime had 10 pitches, which were named in concert pitch (F♯-G-A-B-C-C♯-D-E-F♯-G); the expansion kept the same bell as bourdon, but the notes were renamed to make the bourdon a G (it is common practice to make carillons transposing instruments so that composers can assume a standard range). The new fully chromatic 4.5 octave carillon was named the Yale Memorial Carillon to avoid showing preference to either the Harkness or the Crofut gift. At this point the Guild renamed itself the Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs.

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