2025, Gatherings, Music, Mysteries, Uncategorized

A Bell Curve

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Cantus refers to itself as a low-voice vocal ensemble.  Sounds a little sterile; it is anything but.  They do a wide variety of mostly a cappella offerings: a lot of internation, classical, commissioned pieces.  Yesterday it was an entire program of Frank Sinatra covers – amazing. 

My BFF and I have been attending Cantus concerts for 30 years; we do six to seven concerts a years, depending on the season’s program.   We attended their concerts all over the place – St. Thomas, a church in Excelsior, the McPhail Center, the Ordway.  Yesterdays was at Westminster Presbyterian downtown.  Over the years we’ve been to the Westminster dozens of times; it’s a great space with wonderful acoustics. 

Two thirds of the way through the program, Chris Foss, a bass, stepped up and began a beautifully rendition of I’ll Be Around by Alec Wilder. 

About a minute into his performance, which had a piano accompaniment, the bells of Westminster began to rang.  It was just loud enough that you could certainly here it but not loud enough to completely drown Chris out.  The bells ended very shortly before the song ended.  In all the times I’ve been in Westminster for concerts, this has never happened before.  Not sure why the bells were ringing at noon on a Thursday.  I’m guessing that many performers would have stopped and waited for the bells to stop, but Chris kept his composure and kept going.  He got wild applause after his number; I guess because it was a great song but also as acknowledgement of a rotten situation. 

I didn’t see Chris in the lobby after the show but I hope that anyone speaking to him praised the other song he did during the concert – not just for his calmness during the bells.

Do you live near a church that still rings their bells? Would you have stopped singing?

35 thoughts on “A Bell Curve”

  1. The Methodist church is across the street. The bells ring at 10:20 on Sunday morning. Why at that time Sunday morning, I cannot say but it has never failed in all the years I’ve lived here.

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  2. The “bell tolled” this morning for my budgie, Art. She (mis-named gender) was going down hill for about a month. Fluffed up. Sleeping a lot. But great appetite. The vet examination , weeks ago, had found nothing wrong and suggested old age. Very possible. I’d had her for 8 years from the pet store and never could find out when they received the bird. Poor record-keeping. I dug the grave at the base of a tree and placed stones over Art. I have never made a point of scratching the heads of my flock. It’s fun just watching them play together and feed them by hand. But recently, Art, was allowing my touching. That’s the memory of her that I’ll treasure.

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      1. yes very tough stuff

        i hope the memories get you through

        i did canaries years ago and loved their making the environment so much more pleasant

        art is one of my favorite names

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      1. I named all four Dart, Arm, Art and Port by adapting the character names of the Three Musketeers. Dart was the green/yellow while the others were blue.

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  3. No church bells around here or anywhere I’ve lived, but I fondly remember the U of M carillon at Northrup auditorium being played for quite a while every day at noon (I think). That distinctive sound always seemed perfect for the stately academic setting that is the Mall.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. I remember hearing church bells when I lived in Faribault, and again when I lived in Waterville. I don’t hear them here at all. The churches that are near me are smaller, have unusual names, and are housed in newer buildings without bells. One of these churches is just called 21. I don’t know much about it.

    I do hear the train. It’s the same train I have heard for much of my life. When I lived in the stone house in Faribault, many years ago, I heard that train several times a day. The track was right across the Straight River from the stone house. I became accustomed to hearing it, and it didn’t bother me. I didn’t hear the train anymore when I lived in Waterville. I actually missed it. I can hear it now as it rolls through Dundas, directly west of me. It’s the same train that passes through Owatonna, Faribault, Northfield, Farmington, Rosemount, and on to South St. Paul. Last spring we noticed that it was carrying coal – from north to south. Coal used to travel from south to north. Does anyone know why?

    I’m sure I’d get flustered if that happened to me. I’d try to keep singing though.

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  5. Rise and The Bell Tolls, Baboons,

    Wow, as a performer I would have needed to stop performing due to the distraction. However, even as an audience member, I would have found this so disruptive that I could not enjoy the performance. I would have wanted him to stop, then resume when the bells are done ringing. THat said, I love church bells. One of my earliest memories is of church bells. My Grandpa was the bell-ringer at the local EUB (now Methodist) Church. He would hold me in his left arm and ring the bell rope with his right arm. He had a long string of lapel pins which represented perfect attendance in church. Those lapel pins would swing with the rhythm of the bell and I would try to touch them while they swung.

    I do not live near a church with bells, but I wish I did.

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  6. Two poems. The Curfew Bell Must Not Ring Tonight. Renowned for how 19th century mawkish it is. And the Curfew Bell by Longfellow unrenowned for how Longfellow it is.

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    2. This triggered a memory. I could sing it for you but I couldn’t tell you the back story:

      “Hang from the bell, Nelly,
      Hang from the bell,
      your poor daddy’s locked
      In a cold prison cell.
      As you swing form the left, Nelly,
      Swing from the right,
      Remember the curfew
      Must not ring tonight.

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  7. Leonard Cohen

    anthem

    The birds they sang at the break of day
    “Start again”, I heard them say:
    Don’t dwell on what has passed away
    or what is yet to be.

    Ah, the wars they will be fought again,
    the holy dove, she will be caught again,
    bought and sold and bought again
    the dove is never free.

    We asked for signs, the signs were sent
    the birth betrayed, the marriage spent,
    Yeah, the widowhood of every government
    signs for all to see.

    I can’t run no more with that lawless crowd
    while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud,
    but they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
    and they’re going to hear from me.

    You can add up the parts, you won’t have the sum,
    you can strike up the march, there is no drum,
    Every heart, every heart to love will come
    but like a refugee.

    Ring the bells that still can ring,
    forget your perfect offering,
    there is a crack, a crack in everything
    that’s how the light gets in.

    That’s how the light gets in,
    that’s how the light gets in.

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  8. Sometimes I used to wonder about putting bells on the cows… sometimes it would have distracted me.
    I tease Kelly I’m gonna put a bell on her because she sneaks up on me too often.

    My parents were instrumental in getting a bell for their church 20 some years ago. They brought up the idea, somebody found a bell on the East Coast, someone else volunteered to go get it, and then it’s sat in mom and dad‘s garage on a pallet for several years until money was raised for a Bell tower.
    When dad died I rang the bell at the end of his service. When mom died all the grandchildren rang the bell for her.
    I remember having a discussion about how many times I should ring it for dad. He was 89 years old, but we didn’t think 89 times was appropriate. Thought maybe once or twice for each decade and then somewhere in the middle I lost count.

    The 12 grandchildren for Mom each rang the bell two or three times. There’s a bit of a trick to pulling the rope to ring the bell. It’s not like the movies where it’s straight down and the hunchback of Notre Dame ringing it or anything, this goes into a leg of the Tower and then up to the Bell and you’re pulling the clanger. So it takes a pretty firm tug.

    The plumber building in Rochester has a carillion. It plays for about 15 minutes every day over the noon hour, and maybe a few other random times. There’s quite a history to the story of that.

    https://history.mayoclinic.org/tours-events/carillon-music-and-concerts/

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  9. The Catholic church, adjacent to the Catholic boarding school I attended as a kid, was small, but it did have a bell tower.

    My last year at the school I was given the responsibility of ringing the church bell each evening at sunset. I’d be excused from the classroom where the boarding students were doing homework, to walk out the back door of the school, and through the neighboring priest’s garden to the church. There I’d climb the stairs to the bell tower, and pull the rope to the bell to ring the Angelus: three single peals of the bell, repeated three times, with a brief pause between each set of three, followed by a longer series of double ringing. I marvel now that a ten year old kid was safe to do this, night after night. Precious memory of a different time and place.

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  10. The Catholic church a few blocks from us rings a bell at noon on Sunday. Our Lutheran Church rings the bell in the steeple one at the beginning of each service

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  13. I lived in three different apartments in three different neighborhoods in Moscow. The last apartment I lived in was on Donskaya Ulitza, half a block away from the only church in Moscow that was allowed to ring it’s church bells at the time.

    When the church bells rang on a weekday, it signaled that a funeral was about to take place at the church. I attended several of these funerals because I was curious as to the ceremony itself, but also because they provided a glimpse into a Russian orthodox tradition that appeared to be disappearing. It was there that I saw the first dead person I had ever seen: an old woman in drab clothing with a babushka tied under her chin.

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  14. There are two Catholic churches near our Winona house, and they play briefly at different times on Sundays, Saturday eve.
    And I fondly remember Iowa State’s carillon that would chime daytime on the quarter hour, and the Carillonist would play on Sundays… ? I met a young ISU student recently who said that carillon is alive and well.

    I think I would have stopped singing – don’t like competition.

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  16. We are across the river from St. Thomas university. If I happen to be outside at the right time I can hear their bells but they don’t evoke anything except it must be a certain time of day.

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