Church Bells Return to Russia after 78 Years

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Harvard's Russian Bells Return Home

Detail of craftsmanship on the Lent bell






By Andrea Shea


Cambridge, Massachusetts


30 July 2008



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Antique bells that rang from a tower at Harvard University for the past 78 years are on their way home to a monastery in Russia. Andrea Shea has the story behind their long-awaited return.





The ornate bells in the belfry at Lowell House, a dorm at Harvard, chimed each Sunday afternoon for about 15 minutes. Graduate student Ben Rappaport is the Head Bell Ringer and says he and the other ringers often played contemporary tunes on the enormous bronze instruments. He reports that one of the most popular ones recently was the theme song to the Harry Potter movies.



But the bells themselves haven't always been popular. In fact, when they were installed at Harvard in the 1930's, students who lived in Lowell House couldn't stand the clanging and would protest the noise by flushing huge wads of paper down the toilets hoping to clog the system.






A crane slowly lowers each bell to the ground from the scaffold-rigged Lowell House tower








Professor Diana Eck, the current Master at Lowell House, says 80 years later, students still resent the bells. Part of the reason, she suggests, is that no one really knew how to ring them properly. "It's a little bit more like jazz, it requires a group of several people, it is improvisational," she explains, adding "when we began really hearing the Russians ring them, we knew that they were their bells."



Originally, the bells rang at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. In the 1920's, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin led a brutal campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church, killing monks and destroying sacred property. But the monastery's bells were saved. And in the 1930's, American industrialist Charles Crane purchased them from the Soviet government and donated them to Harvard. "[The set] has been preserved here in a kind of refugee status in the Lowell House bell tower," Eck notes.




Monks from the Danilov Monastery bless the bells before their journey home








With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the church began its campaign to get the bells back. Professor Eck has been working since 2003 to orchestrate their repatriation.



This month, with a choir singing in the background, the bells were lowered, by crane from the Lowell House tower. The Lent Bell weighs more than 1800 kilos. The biggest bell, known as "Mother Earth" weighs over 10,000 kilos.





Hierdeacon Roman prepares to ring the Tsar's Bell, which carries the inscription that it was cast "by order of the Great Tsar and Grand Duke Feodor Alekseevich, the Autocrat of all Russias"





Superior Alexy of the Danilov Monastery blessed the bells as they were loaded onto a flat bed truck. He was accompanied by Hierdeacon Roman, the Monastery's Chief Bell Ringer. Roman says the ceremony is a huge event because the bells symbolize the now-ended conflict between the Russian state and the Church, as he put it, "one of the sacred things that connects us with that time."






He called the bells the voice of the church, and said he was excited that they will again be one of the best sets in Moscow. "There will be a celebration from St. Petersburg to Moscow," he said happily, "all the churches will be ringing."






The ornate new bells that will be installed at Lowell over the summer rest next to the antique set they'll replace








To mark the bells' departure, Heirdeacon Roman and officials from Harvard each rang the Matorin – or Tsar's Bell – the oldest of the set, cast by Feodor Matorin in 1682. Then it, and the other bells, set off for the long voyage back home to Russia.



But the Lowell House belfry won't be silent for long. A near-replica set, also made in Russia, will soon take the place of the antique bells high above Harvard's campus.





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Russian monastery anticipates the familiar toll of ancient bells

A long wait: Hierodeacon Roman, chief bell ringer of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, inspects one of the iconic bells in Cambridge, Mass., before they are shipped home.
Courtesy of Diana Eck

After 78 years, a set of 18 iconic bells rescued from a Moscow monastery will return home.

By Amy Farnsworth Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 13, 2008 edition

Cambridge, Mass. - As the chiming of bells rang through Harvard University's campus among a field of caps and gowns last week, it was the final time they would be heard – the end of an era for the university, but also a new beginning.

For the past 78 years, the 18 bells have hung high above Harvard's buildings, chiming on Sunday afternoons and every year at commencement. This summer, the bells will return home to ring at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow from which they were rescued in 1930 at the height of the Stalinist era, at a time when antireligion campaigns sought to destroy monasteries and melt down their ironwork.

In a world where artifacts are often stolen and seldom returned, the story of the Danilov bells is rare.

It all began in 1929 when American philanthropist Charles Crane was prompted by his agent Thomas Whittemore to save the bells from destruction. He purchased them from the Soviet government, which "was apparently desperate for money and was selling off everything of value – imperial Bokhara rugs, artwork, and church property," says Luis Campos, a Harvard alumnus and history professor at Drew University in New Jersey who has been researching the bells. They were transported by train from Moscow to Leningrad, he says, and then shipped to the US.

Weighing in at 25 tons, the bells were installed in Harvard University's Lowell House residence hall and atop the Baker Library. Students embraced the art of bell ringing with the formation of the Lowell House Society of Russian Bell Ringers, later taking trips to Russia to experience the art firsthand.

"They really are the only four existing bell sets from the prerevolutionary times that weren't destroyed during the Stalinist era," says Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard and master of Lowell House.

For the Danilov Monastery, now the home of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the homecoming of the bells is a matter of spiritual significance. "[The bells] are described as singing icons – that they have voices and tongues that are singing to God as they are ringing," says Professor Campos. "There is no way to replace these bells. They are an organic set and they have their own history from the place they were hung. They were very much a part of the religious community."

Hierodeacon Roman, the chief bell ringer at the Danilov Monastery, had only seen and heard the bells on the Internet until he visited Harvard in 2004, where he had a chance to ring them for the first time. "We've been anticipating [this] for a long long time in our monastery," he said, describing the event as being of "miraculous" importance and praising Harvard's cooperation.

The first request for the return of the bells came in 2002 and picked up momentum as Harvard alumni and the monastery made a case. Last September, Harvard returned the bell from the Baker Library and replaced it with a new bell. This summer, the university will begin disassembling the other 17. A new set of bells created at a foundry in Russia will replace them – all financed by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

To commemorate the bells' return to Moscow, Harvard held a two-day event last week, inviting bell-ringing alumni and members of the monastery, among others, to recount the history, cite appreciation, and hear the bells for the last time on US soil.

The exchange of the bells has led to an ongoing friendship between Harvard and the Danilov Monastery. Harvard students and faculty will visit Russia, and members of the monastery will visit Harvard to teach Russian bell-ringing classes. "It's not just about moving metal back and forth across the ocean," Campos says. "It's about forging relationships between people."

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One last time, ringing out the old

A final peal, then Harvard's no more

By Elizabeth Ross
Globe Correspondent / June 1, 2008

Around the grounds of Lowell House at Harvard University, this year's commencement ceremony will echo with sounds that will soon be lost forever.

For nearly eight decades, the university residence hall has housed 17 Russian church bells whose solemn and mysterious tones have added a touch of gravitas to such occasions. On graduation day this Thursday, the bells will be rung at Harvard for the last time.

After the ceremonies, workers will begin the delicate task of removing the sacred bells, the largest of which weighs about 13 tons, from the bell tower at Lowell House, and preparing the belfry to receive a replacement set cast by a foundry in Russia.

The existing bells were donated to Harvard University in 1930 by American industrialist Charles R. Crane, who purchased them from the Soviet government. The bronze bells were cast in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and are among the few to have survived Stalin's campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church.

The bells' original home, the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, was reopened in 1983. Since then, the Danilov monks have been urging Harvard officials to return the bells, and after extensive negotiations and planning, the bells will be returned this summer to the monastery, which is the residence of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The project is being financed by a foundation established by Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg.

(Another Russian bell that hung at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library was returned to Danilov last September.)

On a recent damp and gray Sunday afternoon, guests were invited up to the Lowell House belfry for what was billed as a Russian bell-ringing concert.

As bright orange ear plugs were handed out to the visitors, members of the Lowell House Society of Russian Bell Ringers, also known as Klappermeisters, began to work an intricate web of ropes and large foot pedals in order to strike the bells.

The students first performed a peal, modeled after one rung at the Assumption Cathedral in the Russian town of Rostov in the 1720s. Soon, they were serving up more popular fare with Christmas tunes such as "Jingle Bells" and music from Hanukkah and Purim, albeit with a Russian flavor.

After some American folk songs, and a couple of classical numbers, the students launched into theme music from "Chariots of Fire" and the "Star Wars" and Harry Potter movies.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at Harvard University's commencement ceremony this year, and the Lowell House bell-ringers said they hope she will visit the bell tower while she is in town.

According to Jeremy Lin, a Harvard senior and resident bell-ringer at Lowell House, the Klappermeisters have been practicing "Hedwig's Theme," the signature Harry Potter tune, for some time in anticipation of Rowling's visit.

"We do a ring every year for Halloween, and one of the things that started after Halloween is that somebody figured out how to play the Harry Potter theme," Lin said. "That person has since graduated, but we knew that it was possible, so we kind of worked up our own version and we thought that it would be nice to play for her."

The tune is a far cry from the sound typically heard in traditional Russian bell-ringing, which uses a range of rhythmic patterns rather than melodies, and has a deeply religious significance for devout Russian Orthodox believers.

Earlier this year, a small group of bell-ringers from Lowell House gained an appreciation of the spiritual significance of Russian bells when they attended an exhaustive training session in Moscow with bell-ringing masters from the Danilov Monastery and the Kremlin.

Diana Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies and co-master of Lowell House, said she hopes that Harvard students will continue to be trained by Russian bell-ringers for years to come.

"This is something we're really committed to having in the future, bell-ringers who know how they should be rung in the Russian fashion and continuing this educational relationship with bell schools in Russia," she said.

Lowell House bell-ringers, past and present, will have one more opportunity to enjoy their historic Russian bells before their swan song at Harvard on Thursday.

Eck is hosting a bell festival and symposium today and tomorrow, which will include several guests from Russia and will be a celebratory affair, she said.

Benjamin Rapoport, the head bell-ringer at Lowell House and a resident tutor, agreed. After the recent bell-ringing concert wrapped up, he explained how he and others at Harvard felt about the return of the bells.

"This is the opening of a new chapter in the history of the bells, and I'm quite happy to see them going back to their home, and I'm also quite happy to see a beautiful new set of bells coming to Lowell House," Rapoport said. "So I think that the future of the bells is very bright, and I look forward to seeing what's going to happen."

Visit boston.com/cityweekly to view a slide show and hear the bells play "Hedwig's Theme."

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Bell ringers gain resounding lesson

By Peter Schworm
Globe Staff / January 21, 2008

The sacred Russian bells at Harvard University's Lowell House rang forth yesterday as they have most Sundays since Easter 1931, their deep, resonant rumble a haunting hymn to their improbable survival of the Stalinist era.

But high in the belfry on this Sunday, the Harvard students struck the 17 bronze bells with a newly forged skill and deeper understanding of the ancient art of bell-ringing. They were fresh from an 11-day training session with renowned Russian bell-ringers at the Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow, the bells' historic home and the residence of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Newly certified by Russian masters and versed in the lore of church bells, the ringers sounded the bells by nimbly manipulating an intricate series of ropes, pulleys, and pedals. Benjamin Rapoport, a Harvard Medical School student and a resident tutor at Lowell House, gently tugged at crisscrossed ropes like a puppeteer to strike a series of smaller bells in time with the ringing reverberations of the massive mother bells. Despite a bracing wind that whipped through the bell tower, he pulled the ropes and heavy wire cables with his bare hands.

"Good Russian weather," he said.

Rapoport and three other students took part in the intensive tutoring session in Moscow as part of a budding exchange program between Harvard and the monastery that was born out of the agreement to return the Harvard bells to their origin this summer.

In exchange, Harvard will receive replicas cast in a Russian foundry and blessed by the church patriarch.

The students spent up to 10 hours a day in classes immersed in both the theory and practice of Russian church bells, called "singing icons" in the Orthodox Church. In striking detail, expert bell-ringers at the mon astery and Kremlin explained the acoustics of different bells, and how their style and sound have evolved over the centuries. The students learned how bells are made, designed, and hung, and their role in church services.

Above all, students came to understand the vital religious and cultural importance of Russian church bells, which were silenced for decades under communism.

"Bell-ringing as an art was almost lost during the Soviet era," Rapoport said.

"They are very hopeful for a renaissance, and it's a special honor to be part of the history."

The classes were roughly divided between lectures, translated from Russian into English, and practice. The quartet was tutored in the unique Russian style and analyzed recordings of their Sunday performances at Harvard.

Some sessions were conducted at a "bell gym," with a small set of bells with dampers and warmer temperatures. Others were held during evening services at monasteries in frigid bell towers.

"All bells all the time," Rapoport quipped.

The tutors, while pleased to encounter disciples of their practice, were stern taskmasters. But they also praised the students, who have tolled the bells at Harvard for several years, for making marked improvement.

The students said they also won over an initially skeptical Russian media, which closely covered their visit in a generally favorable light.

Jeremy Lin, a Harvard senior who yesterday vigorously pulled a pair of ropes to send a string of chimes through the cold air, said ringing the bells in Russia was particularly meaningful.

"To try and understand the context is nearly impossible outside of Russia," Lin said.

"It was very moving to be part of a oral tradition, and to experience the bells as an integral part of a church service. That was the most enlightening part of the experience for me."

Elisa Olivieri, a Harvard senior, spoke with awe of hearing the pealing of the bells call worshipers to service.

"It's very solemn and mysterious, and the bells really amplify that," she said.

The project was funded by a foundation established by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oil and metals tycoon seeking to return lost artifacts to Russia. The bells, one of the few collections to survive Stalinist religious purges, were given to Harvard in 1930 by American industrialist Charles R. Crane to save them from likely destruction.

Students yesterday said striking bells at the right speed was the key to producing the right sound. Striking too hard creates discordance, too soft loses the full texture of the sound.

On their last effort, the students seemed to strike the right balance, sending a shimmering sound through the cold air, traveling for miles and lingering long after the clapper strike.

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.

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