BRONZE PHOENIX Or the second coming of Ukrainian bells

Experts state that about two hundred years ago the bell of the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra was heard one hundred miles away, even in Chernihiv itself. The first bells appeared in Europe in the late sixth century, apparently brought from Asia. In the eleventh century, a monk named Teophilus gave the first recipe for bronze in the first encyclopedia of trades, A Brief Description of Various Trades: “when copper has been cast, tin is added to it in the ratio of 1 to 5, and then the metal is ready for making bells.” Of the oldest Ukrainian bells only one — Sviatoyursky (St. George's), cast by Yakiv Skora in Lviv in 1348, has survived to today.

Over the centuries, the composition of bell metal has practically not changed, which cannot be said of the attitude of the authorities to bells. Having drowned in blood the independence of Great Novgorod, Moscow Prince Ivan IV (the Terrible) ordered the clapper of the Novgorod veche bell be torn out. The Tver city bell was beaten with whips and exiled to Siberia. Peter I cast cannons out of bells, although later he bought new ones from Holland. The Communists simply ruined them or sold them abroad dirt cheap: the wonderful bells of Stanford University in the US were brought in the twenties from the Soviet Union.

On June 30, 1918 the Soviet Government issued Decree “On Alarm Bells”, according to which everyone who dared to sound the alarm bell was subjected to trial by a revolutionary tribunal, known for its penchant for lynch law.

Father Fedir, the last bell-ringer of Kyiv St. Sophia’s Cathedral, recalls that it took the Red Army soldiers several days to tear out the heart of the cathedral – the 40-ton Raphail bell cast by Kyiv artisan Afanasy Petrovych in 1705. Even the names of the bells were under a ban for decades: Raphail and Mazepa, which had miraculously survived on the bell tower, were referred to in special publications only by their weight...

Even the motherland of Friedrich Schiller, the author of the famous “Bell Song,” was affected by this vandalism. In 1940, Reichminister Goring declared that Germany did not need more than 10-12 bells, and all others would go to the war reserve. Thousands of bells were brought to smelters.

The bells of St. Sophia were revived only in the early nineties. Heorhy Chernenko, a future professor of the Kyiv University of Culture, was among the few enthusiasts who were involved. A professional musician, he had played bell music for the scenes of Hovanshchina opera at the Kyiv Opera. This is how he relates his first experience ringing the big bells of St. Volodymyr Cathedral in Kyiv:

“The first time bell-ringer Vasyl Kaputynsky and I played for a very long time on Sunday. After it my guts and skin felt some insurmountable horror. Something stirred inside of me, I felt as if high voltage electricity went through my body. I stayed in this fascinated state of mind and body for almost two days. I vowed never to go up the bell tower again, but already on Tuesday some invisible force drew me to it. I was able to resist the temptation until Thursday, when I could not hold back anymore and ran to the Cathedral just to stand nearby for awhile. On Friday, I came to the bell-ringer and asked his permission to ring the big bell at least once. Ever since, every holiday and Sunday I have played the bells of St. Volodymyr”.

These are the kind of emotions that everyone experiences while ringing big bells. At one scientific seminar German researchers claimed that the infrasounds of big bells open human skin pores wider and positively affect its energy on the atomic level. These processes are said to be going on at a distance of 1.5-3 meters from a bell, and that is why most people are not even aware of the medicinal qualities of the sounds.

Big bells have up to 20 tones that elicit in people not only great enjoyment of the sound but also other wonderful perceptions of the world's sound gamut.

It was then that Chernenko had the idea to give a 15-minute concert after every Sunday service in St. Volodymyr's. He had even found in the Lavra chronicles the famous canonical notes for St. John's bells, which were used as a model for bell notes of St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Paris. However, the church authorities objected to Chernenko's idea: “This bell tower is meant for liturgies, and not for concerts...”

On the special permission of local authorities, the first concert of St. Sofiya's restored bells took place at 3:00 p.m. on March 7, 1991. Because the Communist Party was still in power, the authorities did not allow any bell ringing that evening or the next day, International Women's Day. It was also forbidden to advertise the concert on television and radio, and most people learned about it from the newspapers. A huge crowd of people came to the square to listen. During the first 12 rings, residents of the adjacent houses, with tears in their eyes, started to run out into the square — they had not heard the voice of St. Sophia’s once since 1929. There was one more concert, after which interdenominational disputes over the cathedral forced the museum's management to shut themselves off behind St. Sophia’s ’s high stone walls.

At the turn of the ninth century the French invented the carillon, a special keyboard system for playing bell music. The carillon became very popular in other European countries as well. However, unlike the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox did not use instrumental music during their services. This became the reason for two different types of bell music developing independently in the West and in the East. The Flemish town of Mechelen emerged as one of the centers for the art of carillon playing. Three centuries ago it became home to the Royal Bell Ringing School founded by carillonist Jeff Denin.

In the early 1990s Jo Haasen, the school principal, was visited by two men who introduced themselves as bell-ringers from Ukraine. Since Haasen had learned to play the grand piano in Leningrad, he was curious to see how the Ukrainians would master the unfamiliar instrument.

You can imagine how stunned Mr. Haasen was when Messrs. Chernenko and Ulianov played Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D minor together on one instrument. When Haasen's guests assured him that all bell-ringers in Ukraine play just as well, his good sense of humor did not let him down — he knew they were kidding him. Perhaps, that visit became a start of friendship between Kyiv and Mechelen. This friendship also has, so to speak, a physical dimension — the first carillon in Ukraine was donated by Mechelen and installed this year on the bell tower of the St. Michale’s Golden Dome Cathedral in Kyiv.

When all the trouble with commissioning bells for the Cathedral started, Chernenko sent a letter to Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko with his vision of the modern bell tower and its interior. Finally, the installation design for a carillon was completed. Chernenko brought a videotape of the St. Rombat Cathedral's carillon from one of his regular trips to concerts in Mechelen. Based on the video, Leonid and Serhiy Botvinko of the Avian Co. in Kyiv designed their own version of the ancient instrument. Unfortunately, because the bells were cast by three different companies, there was a problem with tuning them. The first Ukrainian carillon turned out to be not only very original, but also considerably cheaper than the million dollar instruments made in the West.

While the commissioned mechanism for tune playback and computer for hourly bell ringing are being made in Austria, students of the Kyiv Spiritual Seminary come to the bell tower and keep track of time by ringing the Golden Dome bells from 6 a.m. to midnight every day. Heorhy Chernenko promises to welcome his Belgian friend to Kyiv with a well-known Flemish tune. We all will have a chance to hear concerts that Kyiv has never heard before — bell concerts.

Some experts say that this may be the beginning of a new tradition of conducting Ukrainian Orthodox services to carillon music. Whatever the case, bells, like the fairy-tale Phoenix, are resurrecting from the ashes of oblivion into new times that will have no place for torn-out clappers and ruined bell towers.

Photo by Oleksandr Chekmenyov:
Kyiv Shevchenko National University Professor Heorhy Chernenko is building a carillon