Composing for a Piece of Smith History

Each semester, students in Professor Kate Soper’s music composition class get to write a piece for the Dorothea Carlile Carillon. This fall, their assignment for Soper was special: Their works were written for the carillon’s centennial.

The carillon, housed in a tower atop College Hall, was given to Smith by the family of Dorothea Carlile, a member of the class of 1922 who died during an influenza epidemic on October 10, 1918—during her first year at the college. Each year, the Department of Music awards students with two Carlile Composition Prizes, one for the best original work for bells and one for the best transcription.

Composing for the carillon is no simple task: The set now consists of 48 tuned bells, with the largest—the bourdon—weighing 2,800 pounds. The bells are played from a baton clavier—a wooden keyboard, of sorts, with broomstick-length keys, or batons, arranged like a piano.

Playing the carillon is a physically demanding task that involves hitting one’s fists against the keyboard. Although Soper’s students had a chance to try their hand at the clavier during a bell tower tour, their compositions were written without using the bells.

Sarah Vespa ’20 and Natalie Zimmerman ’20 were nervous on the night before their compositions were due. That’s because their pieces were not only their first assignment for the class, but their first-ever attempt at composition.

The original Carlile Carillon before it was installed in College Hall in 1919. Photo courtesy of Smith College Special Collections.

“I did a little bit in high school as part of high school music theory,” Vespa said. “But not seriously. This is my first college composition class.”

“I’m just excited,” she added. “We get to compose for this instrument I didn’t know we had. It’s such a unique opportunity.”

How does one compose for an instrument that lives across campus in a bell tower?

“I’ve been using the piano,” Zimmerman explained. “I don’t really play piano, but I think of things that might sound nice and then play them on the piano to see if they actually do sound nice.”

At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 10—the centennial of Dorothea Carlile’s passing—the two students settled down with their classmates on the green outside College Hall. Up in the tower, Soper—who serves as the college’s Iva Dee Hiatt Professor and assistant professor of music—joined Senior Lecturer Grant Moss, a longtime advocate for the carillon, in performing the students’ compositions on the bells.

Vespa was excited to hear her piece played for the first time. “I also enjoyed listening to everyone else’s pieces and hearing what they did with the assignment,” she said. “Everyone took it in a different direction, and I thought all the pieces were really beautiful!”

Soper agreed. “It was a treat to hear these world premieres ring out across campus on a warm fall day, and to remember a music-loving Smithie of old,” she said.