FMPNmBnr14

 Reflections   on
Let There Be Light
for Carillon
(4 pages of music)

Available as a complimentary PDF booklet download
in September 2022

 FMPLetThereBeLightCarillonBklt2022

Notes

Reflections on Let There Be Light celebrates the carillon installation on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Located atop Storke Tower, the instrument was installed late in the summer of 1969 and dedicated with Thomas Storke in attendance, one of numerous luminaries present for the celebration. Eight bells of the lowest octave were fitted out with separate clappers and programmed to play a musical cipher devised by Carl Zytowski, the Music Department chairperson who championed the new campus acquisition. The university motto, 'Let There Be Light', translated into Latin as Fiat Lux, appears in bas relief on the bourdon bell. The musical cipher assigns one pitch to each letter of the motto: it is played with a pause between each word, with three, five, two and five notes sounded consecutively for each word. The automated strike mechanism sounds the complete tune on an hourly basis, followed by the bourdon bell’s strokes that mark the numbers of each hour.

Reflection’s musical setting develops the cipher’s tune into an extended rounded binary structure. It was scored for the tower instrument’s five octave range. Written in 2000, it bears a dedication to the cipher’s composer, and was published by ACME (aka American Carillon Music Editions). The current publisher-editor of ACME has released the rights for republication to Fruhauf Music Publications, and the score has been reformatted for this reissue. The original bell chamber photograph  is courtesy of Paul Wellman, reproduced here and edited for this publication by permission.

Home Page    Vita    Contacts   
Organ    Choir    Carillon    Downloads