Carillons and Church Organs

A carillon is a set of tuned bronze bells played from a wooden keyboard with the fists and feet, and the reason the Low Countries are full of them is that the brothers Francois and Pieter Hemony worked out in the seventeenth century how to tune bells accurately against one another. Their instruments are still hanging. Most old towns still employ a player who performs at a fixed hour, usually on the market morning, and the music arrives over the roofs whether you were listening or not. The same century left the country an unusual stock of church organs, among them the Muller organ at Haarlem and the Schnitger instruments across Groningen province, all still played.

What you actually see

• A market-morning recital - the weekly hour, heard from the square below.
• The Hemony bells - seventeenth-century casting that set the standard for tuning.
• The Schnitger organs - village churches in Groningen holding instruments of the first rank.
• The playing cabin - the baton keyboard and pedals, seen on a tower tour.

When to go

Carillon recitals are weekly and usually tied to the market morning; the times are posted at the church door or the tourist office. Organ recitals concentrate in summer, with a long-running festival at Haarlem. Tower tours that reach the bell chamber and keyboard generally run in the warmer months and go by guided group only.

Honest expectations

You listen standing in the open, often in wind, and traffic competes with the bells the whole time. Outdoors the tuning can sound sour depending on where you stand. Tower stairs are narrow, steep and unsuitable for anyone unsteady. Schedules change and are frequently posted in Dutch only, and organ programmes assume you already know the repertoire.

Nearby

Utrecht, Delft, Haarlem and the Groningen village churches are all on the circuit.