Tubular bells

For the Mike Oldfield album, see Tubular Bells.

For other uses and particularly for similarly named instruments, see Chime (disambiguation).

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, 30–38 mm (1+1⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) 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

A set of chimes made by Yamaha
Percussion instrument
Other names	Chimes orchestral chimes orchestral bells tubular chimes
Classification	Keyboard percussion
Hornbostel–Sachs classification	111.232 (Sets of percussion tubes)
Playing range
C4–F5 standard; extended range can include B♭3–G5, bass F3–B3, but can vary
Builders
J.C. Deagan Adams Yamaha Jenco Premier Percussion

Tubular bells being played as part of a larger musical arrangement.

Adams Bass Chimes, range F₃–B₃

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:

Chimes/tubular bells

• 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)
• 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

• Bell plate
• Tubaphone
• Wind chime