The Sacramentality of Sound: The Blessing of Bells and Olivier Messiaen’s Conception of Musica sacra

The Sacramentality of Sound: The Blessing of Bells and Olivier Messiaen’s Conception of Musica sacra Jennifer Donelson What Musick is there that compar’d may be To well-tun’d Bells enchanting melody! Breaking with their sweet sound the willing Air, And in the listning ear the Soul ensnare...1 I. Bells in Christian Liturgy and Culture The Church Fathers’ first assessments of the bell are not favorable. St John Chrysostom reprimands Christians for attaching bells to their wrists for protection in imitation of the pagan practice.2 St Ignatius of Antioch urges deacons to invite the faithful to the liturgy by calling their names rather than using a clapper or bell.3 By the sixth century, however, bells had found their way into monastic life. One of the first appearances in monastic literature of the word signus (signal), which could mean a wooden or metal device like a clapper or a semantron, is in the Rule of St Benedict circa 530. Chapter 22 states, “In this way the monks shall always be ready to rise quickly when the signal is given and hasten each one to come before his brother to the Divine Office, and yet with all gravity and modesty.”4 In chapter 43, we see the same word used to indicate a signal that calls monks to abandon their work and hurry to prayer.5 1 Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman, Tintinnalogia, or, The Art of Ringing (London, 1671; reprint, Teddington UK: Echo Library, 2007) 4. 2 Percival Price, Bells and Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 100. 3 Ignatius of Antioch, Ep. ad Polycarpum 2.4 (PG 5:722). 4 “Et ut parati sint monachi semper; et facto signo absque mora surgentes festinent invicem se prævenire ad opus Dei, cum omni tamen gravitate et modestia.” Regula S. P. Benedicti c. XXII (PL 66:490), trans. Cardinal Gasquet, The Rule of Saint Benedict (New York: Cooper Square, 1966) 53. 5 “Ad horam divini officii mox ut auditum fuerit signum, relictis omnibus quælibet fuerint in manibus, summa cum festinatione curratur; cum gravitate tamen, ut non scurrilitas inveniat fomitem.” Regula S.P. Benedicti c. XLIII (PL 66:675). Antiphon 15.1 (2011): 61-77 62 Jennifer Donelson Around 585, St Gregory of Tours, in his Miracles of St Martin, makes frequent mention of signae that are struck or shaken by means of a cord and for the purpose of awakening monks and signaling the imminent beginning of services.6 The word campana (bell) had made its appearance a little earlier in a circa 515 letter from a deacon in Carthage named Ferrandus to Abbot Eugippius in Naples, in which Ferrandus introduces Eugippius to the practice of ringing a bell that was hung.7 In the Liber Pontificalis, we learn that Pope Stephen II erected a three-bell belfry (campanae) at St Peter’s in the mid-eighth century.8 By the beginning of the ninth century, “every parish church [in the Frankish dominion] was expected to have one bell.”9 St Bede the Venerable, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731), relates a miraculous story in which the bell’s toll signaled the death of St Hilda to a nun thirteen miles away, thus suggesting that by this time, even visions from God referenced the role of the bell in the life of the monastery. As she was resting in the sisters’ dormitory, she suddenly heard in the air the well-known note of the bell that used to wake and call them to prayer when any of the sisters had died. Opening her eyes … she saw the roof open, and a great light pour in from above and flood the room. While she gazed into this light, she saw the soul of God’s servant Hilda borne up to heaven in the midst of the light accompanied and guided by angels. Then she awoke, and seeing the other sisters lying around her, realized that what she had seen was either a dream or a vision.... [A]t daybreak some brothers arrived from the monastery where [St Hilda] had died with news of her passing. The sisters replied that they already knew, and...