Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 1999

 

 


SPRING 1999
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Cover Story:
>>The Bells of Iowa State

Feature:
Driving Dr. Carver

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THE BELLS OF IOWA STATE
CELEBRATING A CENTURY: 1899-1999

The bell players

Their instrument is the most public of all instruments. But they are invisible. They know that many of their listeners aren't even aware that "there's somebody up there." Their music is a gift.

Co-carillonneurs
Seaman Knapp couldn’t say no. His fiancee, Laura Storms wanted him to teach her how to play the carillon. Knapp, a nephew of carillon benefactor E.W. Stanton, was the official student player. So together, they climbed the tower for bell lessons. The year was 1906.

But when Laura Storms announced that she was ready to perform and Knapp asked his uncle’s permission, he was stiffly told that “a girl can’t do it.” Knapp responded with a proposal. The next noon he and Laura Storms would take turns playing. If his uncle couldn’t tell the difference, Laura was in.

They did. Stanton couldn’t. Knapp and Storms were co-carillonneurs until they graduated.

Glasses and shoes
Ira Schroeder was hot. He was also invisible, high in the tower on that summer Sunday afternoon in 1932 – so what the heck. He placed a towel on the bench so he wouldn’t slide around, and stripped down to his glasses and shoes. When he heard footsteps, he thought it was the janitor.

He turned to face two women.

“They were obviously very startled,” said Schroeder, in a 1991 interview. “I said, ‘Well, you picked the lock or managed some way to get up here, and now I’ll just have to ask you to leave.’ As they did, I heard one say to the other, ‘And to think we drove all the way from Cedar Rapids to see this!’”

A lighter touch
By now, Tin-Shi Tam, Iowa State’s fifth carillonneur, is accustomed to the reactions of many of the visitors who laboriously climb the 80 steps to her tower. “I thought,” they gasp, “that you’d be...bigger.”

Although the petite Tam acknowledges that it takes strength to play the carillon, improved mechanization has allowed a lighter touch. Trained on the organ and piano, Tam is one of only a few female professional carillonneurs.

In the past, the daunting nature of the tower favored male players. “If you go to visit some of the carillons in Europe, you see that Iowa State’s carillon is actually very easy to get into,” Tam says. “Many other carillons have old towers, with an average of 300 steps. And sometimes they don’t even have steps. Sometimes you have to climb up wooden ladders – and climb across the attic of a church.”

Tam, who arrived at ISU in 1994, teaches carillon to about six students every semester. This year, she had her first female student.

“I try to wipe out the concept that playing the carillon is just pounding on the keys – that you have to play it loud and you can’t do anything else. Carillon music can be expressive and musical.”

One of Tam’s goals is to make the carillon and its music more accessible to students. Anyone is welcome to visit during her noon performances, and on Fridays she takes requests. (She’s been asked to play Chicago’s Color My World, and even Chopsticks.)

Read on | Traditions