Bellwhangers

Last week on a platform perched in the masonry of Manhattan's Riverside Church tower, 16 well-muscled men and one well-muscled woman shivered in a northwest gale and listened. They did not have to prick up their ears. The din was deafening enough to split eardrums less inured. Around them boomed the 72 bells of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon, loudest and biggest in the U. S. The biggest of these bells weighed as much as a good-sized army tank, the loudest of them could be heard in the neighboring State of New Jersey. But to the 17 listeners this tintinnabulation was a concord of sweet sound. For they were members of the North American Guild of Carillonneurs, and they were hearing some pretty hot carillonning.

The man who was whanging out this Brobdingnagian music was a prim, bald-headed carillonneur named Kamiel Lefre, No. 1 bellwhanger of the U. S. carillonneur of the Riverside Church and president of the North American Guild of Carillonneurs. Hard at work inside a little wooden booth at one end of the platform, through a glass window he could be seen pulling, slapping and stamping at the levers and pedals of the most complicated piece of bell-ringing machinery in the U. S. When he had boomed his last bong, Carillonneur Lefre emerged from his booth in a dignified sweat, took off his gloves amid the gale-blown applause of his fellows.

When seven others had had their turn, the Guildsmen motored to New Jersey, where they battered away at the carillons of Rumson and Morristown, then proceeded to the New York World's Fair, where they had a crack at the carillons in the Belgian and Netherlands pavilions. After three days of it, the 18 peal-drunk Guildsmen shook hands and staggered home to their own belfries, after the biggest U. S. carillonary jam ever.

All proper belfries have bells, as well as bats, and some have chimes. Only the finest belfries have carillons. A carillon has at least 23 bells,* tuned to all the notes of the scale and operated by wires and cranks from a central "clavier" bristling with hefty levers and slat-like foot pedals. By punching with his clenched fists and scrabbling with his feet, a good carillonneur can play anything from roundelays to opera. Because a carillon concert takes a deal of punching and scrabbling, carillonneurs have to be husky. Because all carillons are different, and because very little music is written for the carillon, carillonneurs have to be their own composers and arrangers. Even the best bells jangle and hum with unwanted overtones. If the wrong overtones clash, the carillonneur's music sounds like an erupting boiler factory.

The carillonneur's Oxford is the Belgian National Carillon School at Malines, Belgium. There, under the watchful eye of the greatest living carillonneur, 77-year-old Jef Denyn, the neophyte carillonneur gets his final polish and diploma. It takes four or five years of study to make a good carillonneur. The U. S. and Canada together have some 50 carillons, most of them scattered through cities of the East. Nearly all of them are played by old Jef Denyn pupils.

Prize pupil of Denyn is Manhattan's Kamiel Lefevere. Daily he climbs the 335 feet to his crow's-nest in the Riverside Tower, dons his gloves and thumps his way through a bingety-bonging symphony. In winter the freezing wind howls a dismal obbligato through the Gothic masonry around his booth. In summer he plays in his underwear. Says he : "I really think we've got a great mission here, but we have to work hard. The carillon is a folk instrument. It sings with the people."

WAR SONGS

In every war a dragon's-teeth crop of war songs begins to sprout. Germany, which has been on a war-song basis since Hitler came to power, last week had some new Teutonic hymns of might to add to the Horst Wessel Song and Deutschland, er Alles.

THE WORLD BELONGS TO THE STRONG

The world belongs to the strong.

The sun shines on them alone;

We are on the march and nothing shall stop us;

The old are trembling, the weak faltering,

But we, the young, march on to victory.

DANZIG, HOLD TIGHT

0 Danzig, hold tight!

Take heed of your position and accept our good advice.

The enemy desires only to torment you;

Don't hesitate to strike out with manly courage.

Resist the joe, refuse him every inch;

If you give in, you alone will suffer.

You will soon feel the victor's fist.

Danzig, strike out with manly courage.

Britain's cockney chanticleers had not yet started to crow in chorus. But one martial ditty (by Songwriters Max & Harry Nesbitt, Alec Daimler & Syd Green) hit the characteristic British cock-a-doodle-doo:

WE'LL BE THERE

We've heard persistent rumors,

That someone wants a war,

It's really very foolish,

We've had all this before.

Do they read their history?

Results will be the same,

If they go too far,

We'll have to stop their little game.

We'll be there if we're wanted, we'll be there

We'll be there and prepare to do our share,

Peace on earth, good will to all,

But we'll be ready at our Empire's call.

We have heard lots of people shout & rave,

"Britain isn't ready" they declare.

When you hear the lions roar,

Don't you worry any more.

We'll be there if we're wanted, we'll be there.

Meanwhile, in Poland soldiers intoned Jak to na wojence ladnie, first heard during Poland's abortive 1863 revolt against Russia, and later adopted by Pilsudski's Legion:

How good it is to be at war,

When the lancer falls from his horse

His comrades do not mourn him,

They must even ride their horses over him.

Sleep, 0 Comrades, in the warm earth,

Let your dreams be only of Poland.

Barrel Song

Last year a morose Czech tunesmith named Jaromir Vejvoda wrote a bouncing little tune and called it Skoda Isky ("No more love"). Popular among polka-dancing Bohemians and Moravians, Vejvoda's bit of tinkle-tonkle was soon recorded by an old-fashioned Czech beer-garden band, and in disc form reached the U. S. Because of the record's quaint, beery boopishness, Victor (its U. S. distributor) renamed it the Beer Barrel Polka. The Beer Barrel Polka record not only caught on, it spouted continuously and deliriously from slot machines in every skating rink, juke joint and hamburger stand in the Middle West.

When wind of this success reached Manhattan Publishers Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., they decided to get the U. S. publication rights, issued the Beer Barrel Polka as a song with words specially written by Lyric-writer Lew Brown.

In its U. S. one-step version, the Beer Barrel Polka resembled a polka about as much as Yes, We Have No Bananas resembles a pavane. And Librettist Brown's lyrics (written with an eye to Bible-belt circulation) carefully avoided all reference to beer. But last week the Beer Barrel Polka, topped the current best-seller list, with 357,000 copies sold to date.

* In the British art of change ringing (not to be confused with carrillonning) only five to twelve bells are used. These are played by pulling ropes, one man to a rope.

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