Replacement du bourdon Emmanuel dans le beffroi Sud en 1851

The bourdon is the heaviest of the bells that belong to a musical instrument, especially a chime or a

carillon A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 cast-bronze bells. The bells are hung in fixed suspension and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniou ...

, and produces its lowest tone. As an example, the largest bell of a carillon of 64 bells, the sixth largest bell hanging in the world, in the Southern Illinois town of Centralia, is identified as the 'bourdon.' It weighs and is tuned to G. In the Netherlands where carillons are native, the heaviest carillon is in Grote Kerk in Dordrecht (South Holland). The biggest bell serving as bourdon of any carillon is the low C bell at

Riverside Church Riverside Church is an interdenominational church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on the block bounded by Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue, 120th Street and 122nd Street near Columbia University's Mornings ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Cast in 1929 as part of the

Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to: People with the name Rockefeller fa ...

Carillon, it weighs and measures across. The bourdon at

St. Paul’s Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Gr ...

in London, called Great Paul, weighs 16.7 tonnes. It is the largest bell ever cast in the British Isles. Great Paul is the second heaviest bell in the United Kingdom after the 25.7-tonne

Olympic Bell The Olympic Bell was commissioned and cast for the 2012 London Olympic Games, and is the largest harmonically-tuned bell in the world. Cast in bronze bell metal, it is high with a diameter of , and weighs . The bell is now displayed in the Olymp ...

, cast in the Netherlands for the 2012 London Games. As it is not a part of a harmonically-tuned set, the Olympic Bell is not considered a bourdon. Although carillons are by definition chromatic, the next bell up from the bourdon is traditionally a whole tone higher in pitch, leaving a semitone out of the instrument. Bells separated from the next higher note by more than two semitones (one whole tone) are called sub-bourdons.

English-style ring of bells

The heaviest bell in a diatonically tuned English-style ring of bells (

change ringing Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in which the ringers commit to memor ...

) is called the ''tenor''. If a larger, heavier bell is also present it would be called a ''bourdon''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourdon Bell Bells (percussion) Carillons

English-style ring of bells

See also

References