The ornate bells in the belfry at Lowell House, a dorm at chimed each Sunday afternoon for about 15 minutes. Graduate student BenRappaport is the Head Bell Ringer and says he and the other ringers oftenplayed contemporary tunes on the enormous bronze instruments. He reports thatone of the most popular ones recently was the theme song to the Harry Pottermovies.
Butthe bells themselves haven't always been popular. In fact, when they wereinstalled at Harvard in the 1930's, students who lived in Lowell House couldn'tstand the clanging and would protest the noise by flushing huge wads of paperdown the toilets hoping to clog the system.
Professor Diana Eck, the current Master at Lowell House, says 80 yearslater, students still resent the bells. Part of the reason, she suggests, isthat no one really knew how to ring them properly. "It's a little bit morelike jazz, it requires a group of several people, it is improvisational,"she explains, adding "when we began really hearing the Russians ring them,we knew that they were their bells."
Originally,the bells rang at the in Moscow. In the 1920's, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin led a brutal campaignagainst the Russian Orthodox Church, killing monks and destroying sacredproperty. But the monastery's bells were saved. And in the 1930's, Americanindustrialist Charles Crane purchased them from the Soviet government anddonated them to Harvard. "[The set] has been preserved here in a kind ofrefugee status in the Lowell House bell tower," Eck notes.
Withthe dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the church began its campaign toget the bells back. Professor Eck has been working since 2003 to orchestratetheir repatriation.
This month, with a choir singing in the background, the bells were lowered,by crane from the Lowell House tower. The Lent Bell weighs more than 1800kilos. The biggest bell, known as "Mother Earth" weighs over 10,000kilos.
FatherSuperior Alexy of the Danilov Monastery blessed the bells as they were loadedonto a flat bed truck. He was accompanied by Hierdeacon Roman, the Monastery'sChief Bell Ringer. Roman says the ceremony is a huge event because the bellssymbolize the now-ended conflict between the Russian state and the Church, ashe put it, "one of the sacred things that connects us with thattime."
He called the bells the voice of the church, and said he was excited thatthey will again be one of the best sets in Moscow. "There will be acelebration from St. Petersburg to Moscow," he said happily, "all thechurches will be ringing."
Tomark the bells' departure, Heirdeacon Roman and officials from Harvard eachrang the Matorin ? or Tsar's Bell ? the oldest of the set, cast by FeodorMatorin in 1682. Then it, and the other bells, set off for the long voyage backhome to Russia.
But the Lowell House belfry won't be silentfor long. A near-replica set, also made in Russia, will soon take the place ofthe antique bells high above Harvard's campus.