The Carillonneurs

Parishioners in Sunday hats trickled from the doors of St. Martin's Episcopal Church onto the sidewalk of 122nd Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. As throbbing SUVs and wheezing tour buses idled at the stoplight, the air above rang with the tintinnabulation of one of only two carillons in New York City. When the tolling ceased, if you glance up at the ninety-foot bell tower, you may glimpse a shadow darting beneath the bells: Michael Smith, the self-described "unofficial, unpaid Quasimodo of St. Martin's."
The Quasimodo of Riverside Church, Dionisio Lind plays a carillon 392 feet high, and is even less likely to be seen from the street. The carillon is the largest instrument known to mankind. Wires connect a "keyboard" of pedals and knobs to clappers on the bells. St. Martin's forty-two bronze bells, which were cast in 1949, comprise three and a half octaves. The smallest is the size of a flowerpot, and a man could curl up inside the largest. Riverside church carillon was a gift to The Riverside Church by the late John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in memory of his mother. It contains 74 bronze bells ranging in weight from the 20 ton (18 metric) Bourdon (hour bell) to the smallest treble bell of 10 pounds (4.5kg.). The Bourdon is the largest and heaviest carillon bell ever cast. The total weight of all the bells is over 100 tons (91 metric). The carillon keyboard is comprised of wooden levers played with the hands and pedals played by the feet, each one attached directly to the clapper.
As Caitlin Van Dusen writes in City Lore's Sense & the City blog, "As I listened to the tapping of Michael's worn penny loafers on the pedals and the rattle and creak of the wood as his fists slammed down on the batons, I felt like I was hearing the secret heartbeat of these bells whose ringing can be heard within a six-block radius of the church."
The instrument was built in 1939 to celebrate the resurrection of the church from a fire that almost destroyed it, and was financed entirely by donations from the working-class families of the parish. The original carillonneur was from Europe, and when he left in the early 1960s, the congregation sent Dionisio Lind, who had been baptized at St Martin's, to the Mechlin Carillonneur School in Belgium to learn the instrument from the masters. When Dionisio was hired by Riverside Church in 2000, he helped mentor the largely self-taught Michael Smith at St. Martin's. Today, the two are New York City's premiere carillonneurs. Born in 1931, Dionisio Lind, grew up playing handball against the wall of the Museum of the City of New York, where his award will be presented.
Michael Smith, quoting from Ovid, said that one thing he loves about playing the bells is being "a voice and nothing more." After the plinks, clangs, and clongs have faded into the Harlem afternoon, no one knows that Michael or Dionisio are the two unassuming reasons they had paused, if only for a moment, to look up--and wonder, and listen.
Credits: Produced and directed by filmmaker, Robert Maass.
To learn more, visit citylore.org
Caitlin Van Dusen's Sense & the City blog: citylore.org/sound-the-bells-...
Filmed in September 2009, this video was featured in City Lore's City of Memory project, now defunct. It can now be found on our Story Map: storymaps.esri.com/stories/ci...
City Lore, Urban Folklore, video 390

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