[We write this in honour of the bells of Notre-Dame returning to service earlier in November, with 3 new bells also, for the first time since the 2019 fire that threatened to destroy the Parisian landmark which is celebrating its reopening this weekend.]
We at Madeleine’s love the Gulou area of Beijing with its many hutongs at the edge of the lively Dongcheng district not far from the Palace Museum area ….
What is not so well-known is that Gulou itself (translates literally into “drum tower”) has been there since the 13th century and that the tower has struck time for Imperial Beijing (i.e. pre-1924, when the last emperor was expelled from the Forbidden City) for more than 600 years.
Of course the Drum Tower is one part of the twin that includes also the Bell Tower, the two of them standing due north of the Imperial Forbidden City, as timeless sentinels and majestic landmark for timekeeping; the bell was sounded in sequence together with the drums to mark the changes of the morning and night watches. Indeed:
Drums and bells resound, demonstrating the splendor of the imperial capital“,
so goes a line from a poem by a Yuan Dynasty poet.
The current Bell Tower has been there since the 10th year of the Qianlong reign in the 18th century. The big bell stands 7.02 meters high and weighs 63 tons, and has a base diameter of 3.4 meters. When it is sounded after the drums, the city gates were closed and traffic would be cut down, a daily ritual known as “cleaning the streets”. The tolling reassured all of Beijing that everyday business is running smoothly and that order is kept.
Every day at 7pm, the drums were beaten in cycles of 18 times, first quick, then slow, then neither-slow-nor-quick, for a total of 108 times which announces the beginning of the night watches. The drums were beaten every two hours which not only announced the time but also the change of the guards in the city, until 7am, with the bell taking over during the day.
On New Year’s Eve in 1990, after 66 years of silence, the Yongle Bell in the Bell Tower rang out a blessing as Beijingers welcomed the new year and looked forward to their city’s hosting of 11th Asian Games, the first ever Asian Games held in China.
Paris’s version of Gulou’s bell tower, of course, is called Notre-Dame, or “our lady”. It is where Victor Hugo’s bell-ringer hero took his friend to hide; it is also where the Emmanuel bell was rung in 1944 towards the end of WWII to announce the liberation of Paris.
The tolling of Our lady’s bells were not about the city closing its gates, but for most of the cathedral’s history, the bells have been used as a call for prayer, to announce services and to commemorate historic events. Notre-dame’s biggest bell, at 2.61 metres in diameter, is slightly more dainty than Beijing’s one big bell, though it is very interesting to the musician of course that it used to be tuned at F sharp (but was brought down to an F)!
There is an interesting history of Notre-Dame’s bells keeping silent during war times: the silence it maintained during the German occupation in WWII was broken on 25 August 1944, as French and American troops were entering Paris, when Notre-Dame’s bells rang again, soon joined by bells across the city. At the time, many Parisians did not know how close Allied forces were, as the Germans had imposed a strict curfew and controlled the radio stations. The sound of Notre-Dame’s bells was the first indication to many residents that the liberation of the city was imminent. Today, the bells toll at 7pm every 25 August with a special tune, its most solemn sonnerie, called the grand solennel.
In the 21st century, the bells have rung in times of mourning after terrorist attacks: on 12 September 2001, Emmanuel was rung for almost an hour in solidarity with the US after the 11 September attacks. Such ringing was, and still is, extremely rare, as the antique bell is only rung on rare occasions in order to preserve it. The bells were also rung for the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting; while Emmanuel was tolled on 19 April 2020 to mark the first anniversary of the Notre-Dame fire.
The ringing of Notre-Dame’s bells have been automated since the 1930s, and since 2005 they have been programmed to play melodies such as Bach’s “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland”.
Of course, Victor Hugo had observed this about this sing-song lady:
The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius.
One of the four organists at the Notre-Dame, Olivier Latry, explained it was “a miracle” that the 1868 Cavaillé-Colle 5-manual organ was saved in the April 2019 fire; and Latry and a mix of Paris-based and international musicians played at the re-opening concert (Capuçon brothers’ Handel-Halvorsen’s Passacaglia was played “live”, many other performances were pre-recorded due to the bad weather) on 7th December 2024.
The fact that the spire fell down in the cathedral, made a big opening, and then the heats just went out of the cathedral. Otherwise the organ would have, you know, every pipe would have just collapsed on themselves because of the heat.”
As we look forward to hearing Notre-Dame’s bells again on a next visit, we are reminded of a moment in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame when a character comes across a dust-covered brass plaque emblazoned with the words “Spira, spera” – a Latin phrase meaning “Breathe, hope”.
Wander the myriad streets around the bell tower in Beijing and breathe in the atmosphere around the Notre-Dame from a nearby square, the Île Saint-Louis, or the almost-next-door Shakespeare bookshop while in Paris!
