Generations of Iowa State University students have all had their days marked by the ringing of the campus bells at noon. This year is the 125th anniversary of the Stanton Memorial Carillon.
Tin-Shi Tam, the university carillonneur and Cownie professor of music at Iowa State, has been playing the carillon for 30 years. She first heard the bells of a campanile when she was walking across the University of Michigan campus as a graduate student, and was inspired to learn how to play the carillon.
The carillon is a uniquely public instrument to learn, with the bells being heard all throughout campus, but there is a practice keyboard they use.
“In a way, it's like playing the organ. We use both our hands and feet," Tam said. "Now we need to coordinate, in a lot of sense. And then it's similar, in a way, like playing a piano, because carillon is a percussion instrument, so the keyboard looks like a piano keyboard with black keys, white keys, but our carillon is the same color with wooden baton.”
To access the carillon, Tam climbs up a narrow stair passage to get to the instrument, sitting behind the clockfaces inside the campanile tower. With her fists, she firmly punches wooden knobs that connect to 50 large bells in a chamber above her head. They all produce different notes.
In addition to playing every day at noon, Tam teaches a class of about six students how to play the carillon each semester. The students come from a variety of educational backgrounds, but most of them are engineers looking for a new experience. Tam said it doesn’t hurt to have a special skill on job applications.
“Here at Iowa State, it’s part of the environment and part of the community. So, a lot of the time while I play, I'm sharing the joy... with everyone. So for me, personally, I love playing. I love music. But on the other hand, I'm also sharing with the community at that particular time, and that is very unique.”
The first bells were donated by Edgar Stanton, a member of Iowa State’s first graduating class as a memorial to his wife, Margaret MacDonald Stanton, Iowa State’s first dean of women.
Playing the carillon keeps Tam paying attention to what's going on in central campus and keeps her engaged with campus life. She even coordinates playing celebratory music for special events. The carillon was also used to commemorate the 100th anniversary of legendary football player Jack Trice’s passing.
Students are encouraged to send in song requests for Tam to play on Fridays. And she willingly faces the challenge of creating arrangements of country music or pop songs, such as "Hot to Go" by Chappell Roan.
“I think it uses a lot of creativity. The most important part is trying to get what people can recognize. So maybe the tune is important, and then the rhythm part ... I think one of the unique things about our carillon, we only have 50 bells, so we just have to put everything within [those] 50 bells.”
To hear this conversation, listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Dani Gehr produced this episode.
