Tubular bells
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "about". Script error: No such module "For". Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family.[1] Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillons, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within an ensemble.[2] Each bell is a metal tube, Template:Cvt in diameter, tuned by altering its length. Its standard range is C4–F5, though many professional instruments reach G5. Tubular bells are often replaced by studio chimes, which are smaller and usually less expensive instruments. Studio chimes are similar in appearance to tubular bells, but each bell has a smaller diameter than the corresponding bell on tubular bells.
Tubular bells are usually struck on the top edges of the tubes with a rawhide- or plastic-headed hammer. A sustain pedal may be attached to the instrument to allow damping and un-damping of all the bells at once. Very loud high-pitched overtones can be produced by vibrating the bottoms of the tubes with a violin bow.
The tubes provide a purer tone than solid cylindrical chimes, such as those on a mark tree.
Chimes are often called for in orchestral and concert band repertoire. They rarely play melody, instead being used most often as a color to add to the ensemble sound; but chimes do occasionally have solos, particularly in imitation of church bells.[2]
In tubular bells, modes 4, 5, and 6 appear to determine the strike tone and have frequencies in the ratios 92:112:132, or 81:121:169, "which are close enough to the ratios 2:3:4 for the ear to consider them nearly harmonic and to use them as a basis for establishing a virtual pitch".[3] The perceived "strike pitch" is thus an octave below the fourth mode (i.e., the missing "1" in the above series).
Classical music
Tubular bells were first used orchestrally by Giuseppe Verdi in his operas Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853) and Un ballo in maschera (1859).
Notable uses in classical music:
- Giuseppe Verdi – Rigoletto (1851)
- Giuseppe Verdi – Il trovatore (1853)
- Giuseppe Verdi – Un ballo in maschera (1859)
- Modest Mussorgsky – Boris Godunov (1869, 1872, 1874)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – 1812 Overture (1880)
- Pietro Mascagni – Cavalleria rusticana (1890)
- Ruggero Leoncavallo – Pagliacci (1892)
- Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 2 (1895)
- Giacomo Puccini – Tosca (1900)
- Alexander Scriabin – Le Poème de l'extase (1908)
- Anton Webern – Six Pieces for large orchestra (1909–10, revised 1928)
- Claude Debussy – Ibéria (1910)
- Gustav Holst – The Planets (1914–16)
- Giacomo Puccini – Turandot (1926)
- Edgard Varèse – Ionisation (1931)
- Richard Strauss – Die schweigsame Frau (1935)
- Paul Hindemith – Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1944)
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold – Violin Concerto (1945)
- Benjamin Britten – Albert Herring (1945)
- Aaron Copland – Symphony No. 3 (1946)
- Olivier Messiaen – Turangalîla-symphonie (1946–48)
- Carl Orff – Antigonae (1949)
- Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. 11 (1957)
- Olivier Messiaen – Chronochromie (1959–60)
- Arvo Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
- David Stanhope – Folksongs for Band, Suite no. 3 (1991, revised 2016)
- Daron Hagen – Shining Brow (1993)
In popular music
Multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield's first album Tubular Bells, which provided the musical theme for the 1973 film The Exorcist, came about when, at the beginning of his "solo symphony" recording project in 1972, Oldfield discovered a set of tubular bells at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, England, used by the previous musician recording there, John Cale.[4]
Other uses
Tubular bells can be used as church bells, such as at St. Alban's Anglican Church in Copenhagen, Denmark.[5] These were donated by Charles, Prince of Wales.
Tubular bells are also used in longcase clocks, particularly because they produce a louder sound than gongs and regular chime-rods and therefore could be heard more easily.
See also
References
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
External links
- Information about tubular bells – Vienna Symphonic Library
Template:Bells Template:Percussion Template:Tube percussion idiophones Template:Authority control
- Pages with script errors
- Wikipedia articles incorporating the Cite Grove template
- Wikipedia articles incorporating the Cite Grove template with a url parameter
- Pages with broken file links
- Bells (percussion)
- Keyboard percussion instruments
- Metal percussion instruments
- Orchestral percussion instruments
- Pitched percussion instruments
- Tube percussion idiophones
- Concert band instruments