CAMBRIDGE - HU : USA - MA

*Location:

   Lowell House
   Harvard University
   Holyoke Place
   Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
   LL: N 42.37116, W 71.11829

   Danilov Monastery
   Moskva (Moscow), USSR (now Russia)

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*Player:

  (unknown)

*Contact:

   Master of Lowell House
   Harvard University
   Cambridge, MA  02138
   T: (617)493-1600
   E: dianaeck@fas.harvard.edu,
      daustin@fas.harvard.edu
   - or -
   Lowell House Building Manager
   E: jcoveney@fas.harvard.edu

*Schedule:

   Sundays 1300; Third Monday 1830;
   Commencement; annual (May) playing
   of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture".

*Remarks:

   Zvon, with pitches approximately
   G0,A,C,D,D#,G1,C,G2,A,C,D,D#,F,G3,A,B,C;
   bells cast 1790-1890; an 18th bell is
   on the grounds of the Harvard Business
   School.  These bells are a subset of
   what originally were perhaps as many
   as 34 bells in the Danilov Monastery.
   2006: Plans are underway to return
   these historic bells to the Danilov
   Monastery in exchange for an equivalent
   set of new bells.

*Technical data:

   Zvon of 17 bells
   Pitch of heaviest bell is G  in the bass octave
   Transposition is not applicable
   Keyboard range:     ZVON  /    NONE  
   The arrangement of tones and/or semitones
     is non-standard; see Remarks above.
   The whole instrument was installed in 1930
   Year of latest technical information source is 1991

*Links:

The Lowell House Website has two tower photo on the home page, and presents two recently-added slideshows about the bells.  Unfortunately, the photos (very good but very large!) are not captioned; they appear to include a visit to zvons and bell towers in Russia.
An extensive sub-site (which may not be accessible from the Lowell House home page for some browsers) offers many other pages about the bells and their history.

A Harvard Magazine article gives a brief history of the zvon and the plan to swap these historic bells for new bells.  (Agreement was reached in September 2006, and it appears that the exchange might happen as early as 2007.)

"The Harvard Crimson" article on the planned return, with photo of the bass bell being rung by hand.

A tower photo

Since this instrument is by an assortment of founders, there is no foundry index entry.

Ranking among all North American chimes by size (number of bells).

Index to North American zvons.

Index to all tower bell instruments in MA.

*Status:

   This page was built from the database on 28-Nov-06
   based on textual data last updated on 2006/11/15
   and on technical data last updated on 1991/11/21

Explanations of page format and keyboard range are available.

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