The 29th Annual Summer Carillon Recital Series opens July 4 with an Independence Day program and continues on Sunday afternoons through August 27.
Rain or shine, the programs begin at 4 p.m. and will feature outstanding players, all of whom are members of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. Bring a blanket, folding chairs, a basket of treats, your friends, and enjoy the music of the bells. The 2023 House of Hope Carillon Series is supported by a grant in memory of Sanford “Sandy” Moss made at the recommendation of Harold and Grace Kurtz, executors of the Moss estate.
The 2023 Series celebrates the centennial of the House of Hope Noyes Memorial Carillon. Dedicated on November 4, 1923 in memory of House of Hope trustee Charles Phelps Noyes by carillonneur E. M. Michiels, the 28-bell instrument was cast by the Michiels foundry of Tournoi, Belgium. HOH organist Robert Buchanan Morton was not impressed. “It was a great disappointment, for the man played very badly, and the bells were not in tune,” he wrote years later in his autobiography. The instrument had many failings, none of which seemed even remotely correctible. Morton soon arranged to have all the bells removed and sent to the Meneely Bell Foundry in Watervliet, New York, for retuning. The result was unsatisfying.
Thus began decades of odyssey. Initially, Morton played the disappointing instrument as best he could. But his heart was with the organ and his choirs, not with the carillon and certainly not with the 106 steps that he needed to climb to get to it. So when a young member of the church, Theophil Rusterholz, approached him in 1941 with the offer to play, Morton happily obliged. Rusterholz remained carillonneur until he retired in 1987.
Under his guidance and steadily-increasing knowledge and understanding of the Noyes Carillon and its place in the carillon world, Rusterholz oversaw expansion of the instrument to 40 bells in 1951 and to 48 bells in 1959, each time removing original Michiels bells and expanding the instrument in both the bass and treble ranges. In 1985, three new bass bells markedly expanded the instrument’s breadth and depth. Finally, in 1992, the entire instrument was renovated and a 49th bell, a low C-sharp, was added, making the four-octave instrument fully chromatic.
Guest artists from Europe and North America will join HOH Music Associate Timothy Short and Carillonneur Dave Johnson in celebrating the glorious instrument. Their performances will feature a wide variety of music, ranging in time from 17th century to present, in mood from serious to comic, in concept from whimsey to magnificent, in tone from popular through spiritual to classical, and in form from transcriptions to original works.
Schedule: All recitals begin at 4 p.m.
Sunday, August 20:
Lyle Anderson is Carillonneur Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although officially retired, he continues to play regularly. Besides carillon study with John Wright Harvey, he is a 1980 graduate of the Netherlands Carillon School in Amersfoort. On Sunday mornings he plays organ alternately at Madison’s First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Plymouth Congregational Church.
Sunday, August 27:
Dave Johnson was appointed Carillonneur for House of Hope in 1993. He is active in The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America and has performed recitals throughout the United States. He was an elected member of The Guild’s board of directors from 1999 to 2005, was again elected in 2010, has served on various committees, was its recording secretary for ten years, and in June 2010 was elected its president. Dave received his B.A. from Hamline University, M.A. from Stanford University and Ph.D. in American Intellectual History from the University of Kansas. He is the author of two histories of Hamline, a 150th anniversary history of House of Hope and a 50th anniversary history of Presbyterian Homes and Services of Minnesota. He taught history at Kansas Wesleyan University, the University of Kansas and Pacific Lutheran University.
