Once, the carillon bells would sound across the town markets of Europe’s Low Country, amid the chatter of merchants and the shrieking of farm creatures. Today, thousands of these instruments — a bit like a xylophone but very tall and with many bells — still ring across those lands.
Here in Tennessee, they number only six. But at least one of these will be ringing Sunday when Baylor School graduate and New Jersey math teacher Anton Fleissner descends to St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Ooltewah for an eclectic guest performance, to be consumed on a lawn along with food and tea.
The bell contraption at this church was not always a carillon.
“In 2003, it had 19 bells, so it didn’t meet the 23 bell minimum,” Chuck Nix, referring to the minimum number of bells stipulated by The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, said by phone Thursday. “It was officially called a chime and not a carillon.”
Nix has run a Chattanooga-area pipe organ business since 1983 and helped manufacture the steel and wood pieces of the initial 19-bell chime. His business partner at Barger & Nix Organs was William Barger, the organist and music director at St. Francis, who Nix said died in June.