Carillon

To some the sound of popping corks is music of the sweetest; others fancy the tones of their own voice as reverberated by the tiled walls of a bathroom; to a man who truly loves his work even the angry, mosquito-like whine of an alarm-clock in the raw dusk of a winter morning may be welcome. But partisans of these noises generally realize that friends might be seriously offended if forced to share their taste, particularly if the friends desired at the moment only to sleep. Using such instances as parallels, certain tenants of apartment houses on Park Avenue, Manhattan, last week maligned John Davison Rockefeller Jr., calling him "selfish," "inconsiderate" and worse.

As everyone knows, John D. Rockefeller Jr. recently presented the Park Avenue Baptist Church with a set of bells, the largest carillon in the world, and procured from Belgium Anton Brees, carillonneur, to play them. Every Sunday, every Thursday evening and sometimes in the morning, the bells have beautifully pealed forth adaptations of great music. Mr. Rockefeller believes it is a sweet sound. Not so an architect, Maxwell Hyde, who wrote to the New York Times declaring the bells to be "a nuisance"; not so an aged paralytic, who declared the bells tortured him; not so young mothers, who stated to pressmen that they "keep the children awake."

Carillonneur Brees, when confronted with these complaints, admitted that the music of his bells is not all that it should be. Because the Baptist Church is so low and the echoing walls so high, the carillon sounds to a man in the street much as a great organ would sound to someone standing among its pipes. M. Brees said:

"These huge buildings act as acoustic devices badly placed, so that the tones of the bells do not fall unobstructed or without echoes on the ears of the listeners. It must be remembered that this is the largest carillon in the world-- the greatest volume of sound ever sent forth from bells. The Antwerp carillon, although much smaller, is at a height of 270 feet, and these bells should be in a tower at least 300 feet high to get the best music."