[Wesleyan University]
   

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ACQUIRES NEW BELLS FOR SOUTH COLLEGE

Signs contract with Verdin Bell Company of Cincinnati

For immediate release: Monday, December 13, 2004

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) — Wesleyan University has signed a contract with the Verdin Bell Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, for the casting and installation in the South College belfry of eight additional bells. This new addition will upgrade the Wesleyan bells from the status of a chime (10-22 bells) to that of a carillon (23 or more). Acquiring a carillon for the University has been in the planning stages since 1999.

Each bell in South College has an inscription of a donor or a set of donors to Wesleyan University. Wesleyan anticipates the installation of the new bells into the South College belfry in August 2005 with a dedication during the following homecoming/family weekend.

"We're moving out of the minor league of bell playing and into the major league," says Peter Frenzel, professor emeritus of the German Studies Department and six-year Wesleyan chimemaster. "Now, I’ll have more notes, so I can play more songs."

The new bells will be cast by Petit & Fritsen, the Royal Dutch Bell Foundry in The Netherlands, and then shipped to Cincinnati via New Orleans and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. They'll later be completed and fine-tuned by the Verdin Bell Company.

Wesleyan's first set of 11 bells was shipped across the north Atlantic from England, while dodging German U-Boats in 1918 during World War I. They were first played on campus on George Washington's birthday in 1919 and donated by the seven surviving members of the Wesleyan Class of 1863.

An additional five bells were donated to Wesleyan University in 1966 anonymously. The donor was later revealed as Victor L. Butterfield, the then outgoing president of Wesleyan.

The bells are played nearly every weekday by dedicated members of the Wesleyan bell guild, Bell & Scroll. The new bells will provide Frenzel and his six-student chimemasters with two full octaves and one note. Some notes, such as a low C, can reverberate for 45 seconds and be heard for more than a mile away.

Established in 1831, Wesleyan University is a coeducational, private university of the liberal arts and sciences. It serves approximately 2,700 undergraduates and 150 graduate students and offers a challenging academic environment promoting independent thought and action.

For more information, please contact Laura Perillo at 860-685-3813 or lperillo@wesleyan.edu.