"Bring Out the Instruments!", Heidi Steimel

[shadowfax]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

As for the bells, I have mentioned it mainly since you mention the bells in Minas Tirith (even though briefly) in there as well. But true, they were not really used otherwise than for signals.

Which ties back nicely to the renaissance Italy analogy as the reason that Italian towns had such high church towers during this period was

a) they doubled as watchtowers, helping watch out for enemies
b) rining the bells in a certain way could be used to signal to the next village that help was needed.

Also, at the time, church towers were often occupied by watchers whose job it was to keep their eyes strained for and signs of fire breaking out in the cramped streets of old cities. To assure citizens that the watcher was not asleep he had to play his trumpet at given intervals. The tunes they played were set and passed on from one generation of watchers to the next and so remained virtually unchanged for centuries. In Cracow such a watch still exists today although it is more for tradition as I assume other fire protection mechanisms now exist.

Later, as clock-making arts improved, church bells were mechanised and so could play the tunes without needing a watchman. This coincided with improvements in the ways cities were built so reducing he risk of fire. Today tower chimes (as for example that of Big Ben in Westminster) thus hail to a much older tradition which would once have seen the tunes being played manually.