Imaginary Syllabi: Music and Metallurgy

An article in today’s New York Times about the destruction of church bells during World War II (and subsequent rebuilding) and its effect on music creates an idea for a class exploring the metallurgy and production of bells…

Resources (mentioned in article)

• Book: Bronzes to Bullets: Vichy and the Destruction of French Public Statuary, 1941–1944 (2008) — not specifically bells, but more generally about French statues and monuments that were melted down and shipped to Nazi munitions factories during the Second World War.
• Lost Music Project — more generally about Nazi plunder of music physical culture items
  • Chapter: “Bells in the Cultural Soundscape: Nazi-Era Plunder, Repatriation, and Campanology”
• Percival Price (1901-1985)
  • Book: Bells and Man — Traces the history of bells and their use by different civilizations, examines their connection with Christian churches, and discusses the use of bells to make music, mark time, and signal events
  • Book: Campanology, Europe, 1945-47 — A report on the condition of carillons on the continent of Europe as a result of the recent war; on the sequestration and melting down of bells by the Central Powers; and on research into the tonal qualities of bells made accessible by war-time dislodgment.
• Tuur Eijsbouts foundry
  • Video: Bronze bell casting
  • Video: Brone bell casting

Possible activities

(in no particular order)

• Complete METAL: Casting online course work
• Lab: Do some practical casting
  • (Probably feasible to do this as a lost-PLA type process, bell metal seems like it is not particularly high temperature, and even aluminum bells might be OK)
  • Field Trip: Visit a local bronze foundry or one up in Newburgh
• Lab: Chladni plate visualizations — standing waves on a flat plate surface
• Computer: Sound analysis with Fourier-transform, etc.
• Computer: Simulating the sound of bells with an (simulated) analog synthesizer or write some DSP programs
• Computer: Finite element simulation of a bell (direct simulation of physical process?)
• Visit: Metropolitan Museum Bells (including Chinese bronzes) — direct link to Met Collection query
• Music activity: Change ringing with handbells
• Listen: Musicology traditions related to bells
  • Excursion into Gamelan (which characteristically employes metallophone instruments) and non-western musical traditions/tunings
  • Excursion into

Useful background and other threads

• Pythagoras and the blacksmith hammer in the origins of music theory
• Bellfounding
• Jesuit angle: Bells in the Reducciones