It's About Time: Those UW Bells Get An Update

University of Washington students never have to wonder for whom the bell tolls.

They know it tolls for them.

Every hour of the school day, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, the campus carillon - better known as the Denny Bells - has been bonging away the familiar "Westminster Chimes" tune, followed by the hour, from speakers located atop Denny Hall.

Lately, however, the bells have gotten a little erratic. Failures in the clockworks, which have been around for half a century, and in the vacuum-tube electronics and cabling that link the Denny speakers with the keyboard and clock in the far-off Music Building, have occasionally bewildered the campus community with bells sounding the wrong hour at the wrong time. The sound quality has deteriorated, too.

It's time to haul those bells into the digital era, and that is precisely what the UW is doing with its new all-computerized electronic carillon (purchased for $15,000, budgeted from the President's Fund for Excellence). That new system, housed entirely in Denny Hall, using sampled (digitally recorded) sounds of real carillons played by keyboards or prerecorded memory cards, is expected to give the campus not only timely hour-keeping but also regular carillon concerts.

Ringing up memories

Just listening to those bells, real or digitally sampled, is a trip down memory lane for old Huskies. The bells revive ancient feelings of dread or favorable anticipation, feelings you thought you'd buried forever in that file drawer crammed with valuable memorabilia (like that first UW parking ticket).

During my student years in the late 1960s, classes started at half-past the hour and recessed at 20 past, leaving a 10-minute gap in which we trekked like obedient mountain goats from upper to lower campus and back again. That meant the bells usually sounded, then as now, at an intermediate point in the class.

Bong! meant terrific news, sometimes: Only 20 minutes left of that crashing bore of a chemistry prof! During finals, the bells were cause for profound alarm: only 20 minutes left to finish that exam!

The bells also served a warning function before classes. During the hot spring days, we climbed to the dorm rooftop in bikinis to court skin cancer. Basted in oil, arrayed supine in rows like shish-kebabs on a barbecue grill, we leaped up in horror when the carillon sounded the hour: only 30 minutes to de-baste, dress and gallop off to class!

Somewhat later, when a young Robin McCabe first came to the campus, she earned about $60 a month playing the regular morning concerts, from 8:20 to 8:30 a.m., on the carillon.

"Those were my biggest audiences ever," cracks McCabe, who went on to become an internationally respected concert pianist, now director of the UW School of Music.

"There's something about those bells that really ring people's chimes, if you'll pardon a pun. Everyone seems to have some kind of association of the bells with important events in their UW history."

Because the stentorian sound of the carillon imparts an instant authority to whatever is being played, McCabe got away with murder at the keyboard. On Fridays, before a big football game, she'd play the enemy team's football song in what she calls "strange mutations," doubtless sending bad vibes their way. Friends dared her - and she happily accepted - to play Bach-like variations on such pop tunes as "Scarborough Fair" and "Norwegian Wood." When Charles DeGaulle died, she played "Goodbye Charlie."

George Bailey, McCabe's predecessor at the carillon keyboard, also liked to indulge in the occasional musical joke during his twice-daily concerts. Old-time alums can remember Bailey playing a solemn version of "Blue Skies" as the snow fell in the Quad.

Updating the bells, again

The new bells will be the third incarnation of the UW carillon system. The first UW bells were donated in 1912 by Col. Alden Blethen, founder of The Seattle Times, and were a campus fixture until they were destroyed by a 1949 fire. They were replaced by the current system, in which the clock and keyboard are located in the Music Building's sub-basement, linked by cable to the Denny tower speakers.

This week, the brand-new digital carillon will be unveiled in a public dedication ceremony on Thursday at noon, outside the main entrance to the Music Building. There will be a few short speeches (this is, after all, a university), and a carillon concert. McCabe will return to the keyboard with her faculty colleague, Carole Terry, and heaven alone knows what they will play.

It is known, however, that McCabe is looking for a way to honor UW president William Gerberding, who supplied the carillon money, and that he is a known devotee of Sinatra.

Don't be surprised if you hear those stately bells bonging out "My Way."