Perth Carillon CD

A recording of the unique collection of bells at St John’s Kirk in Perth has been released on CD.

St John’s has a carillon (a set of bells played from a keyboard) of 35 bells, including a keynote bell dating back to the early 16th century.

The carillon is owned by the City of Perth and looked after by the city council. It is regularly played by Dr Ian Cassells, Scotland’s foremost carilloneur and President Emeritus of the British Carillon Society. St John’s follows the European traditions of playing music of all types on the bells, rather than the more familiar English one of change ringing.

The recording was produced by the Friends of St John’s Kirk, with the help of Dr Nick Green and his students from the audio engineering department of Perth College UHI.

At the launch of the CD, in St John’s on September 4, Dr John Hulbert, Chairman of the Friends, paid tribute to everybody involved in bringing the project to fruition.

He said: “The idea of a CD was on the table for a long time, but the cost of getting a commercial company to record it was going to be prohibitive.

“Then Jeffrey Anderton came along. Jeffrey was an amateur, but had all the necessary skills and equipment to produce a top quality CD – but course, with it being Jeffrey, there was to be no charge. So the show was on the road. Tragically, Jeffrey quite suddenly became very ill, and died before we had advanced very far. However, I think it is fair to say that without his initial injection of enthusiasm, we might never have got started. His wife is here today, and I want her to know the debt that we owed to him.

“Without Jeffrey, what were we going to do? Fortunately we were put in touch with Nick Green. Nick has brought academic rigour to the enterprise, and the objective of producing not just an excellent CD, but a heritage recording comparable to a photographic survey of an ancient building.

“With the music on a memory stick the CD was actually produced by Birnam CDs, in Birnam of course. The design on the sleeve was the work of my wife, Sara, who is a graphic designer, and I think it emphasises the uplifting effect of carillon music.”

Dr Hulbert also thanked church minister, the Rev John Murdoch, whose encouragement and support he said had been ‘vital’.

St John’s Kirk has 63 bells in total, believed to be more than any other building in the UK. The carillon’s 28 cwt Bourdon, or Keynote Bell, named the ‘John the Baptist’ to whom the church is dedicated, was cast in Flanders in 1506, and installed in St John’s when the tower was completed in 1511. The other 34 bells in the carillon were cast in London and installed in 1935 following a campaign by Melville Gray of Bowerswell.

Many individuals and organisations in Perth contributed to the cost, and several bells were donated as memorials to men killed in the Great War. The bells are played on a ‘clavier’ or keyboard located in the tower.

For more information on the carillon visit www.st-johns-kirk.co.uk. CDs cost £8 and are available to buy from the church.