John Courter: A passion for the bells

By Frank Kourt

John Courter, of Berea, is a carillionneur.

No, that’s not somebody who has more money than Donald Trump.

It’s a musician who plays the carillon (pronounced care-ill-on), a relatively little-known instrument (at least in the United States) that plays melodic bells and is so large that even “traveling” versions have to be shipped from place to place by tractor-trailers.

Most carillons, like the one on the Berea College campus that John calls home base, are housed in towers. The one at Berea College is located in the Draper Tower. It is a 56-bell instrument that weighs 11 tons, and is the largest instrument of its kind in Kentucky.

John’s love of the instrument began when he was in high school in his native Lansing, Mich. He would go to carillon concerts at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

“It fascinated me from the beginning,” John said of the instrument. “You get a passion for the sound of the bells.” It was only natural that when he became a music student at Michigan State he’d want to learn to play the gigantic instrument that held such an attraction for him. He sought out his mentor, Wendell Westcott, carillionneur at the university, and asked to take a course in playing the instrument.

There was no such course at the time, but John persisted. Thus was born Carillon 323, and John was the first student on campus to sign up to take it.

The carillon is an unusual instrument to play. It consists of an organ-like keyboard with large wooden “keys” that are called batons, and foot pedals. The batons and pedals are attached to wires that, in turn, are attached to bells mounted on a steel frame above. The musician mostly strikes the batons with a closed fist and uses his or her feet to manipulate the pedals to make music. The tone produced is dependent on the thickness of the metal bells.

John said much of the music played on the bells is written by the carillionneur himself, and he has written many such compositions.

The carillon was developed in the Netherlands back in the 1500s, and refined a century later, John said. It began in a time when bells were used as a form of communication — to tell time, to memorialize the dead and to alert people of occurrences such as fires. Villages began adding different numbers of bells to their towers and eventually someone figured out a way to use the bells to make music. Thus was born the carillon.

John said there are about 185 carillons in the United States, and about 200 in the Netherlands, which is about the size of Ohio.

After John earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and taught some high school and college courses in music, he came to Berea College in 1971 to teach music. Now retired from classroom teaching, John is still Berea College’s carillionneur and organist. He also writes many original musical compositions, both for the organ and the carillon.

Berea College didn’t get its carillon until 2000, when the Draper Building tower was completed, although it bought and stored the bells for it back in 1992.

While John said the organ is his “primary instrument of interest,” he has played both carillons and organs all over the world. He is a fellow of The American Guild of Organists, the highest achievement in the organ profession in the United States. He also holds an advanced degree from the Netherlands Carillon School, which, he said, is “sort of a doctoral degree in carillon.”

John is also a member of the World Carillon Federation, a group that meets at a convention once every three years at different locales around the world. Recent conventions that John has attended have been in Gdansk, Poland and Cobh, Ireland. The next one will be in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where there is a 77-bell carillon, in 2011.

John will be playing the carillon at Berea College on Aug. 3 as part of its Summer Carillon Concert Series.

If you’re fortunate enough to be on the Berea College campus between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday during the school year, you will hear the sweet sounds on the carillon.

That’s John Courter pursuing his passion for the bells.

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