Peter and Paul Cathedral. Clock of our life Vyborg Clock Tower

It seemed to me that nothing could surprise me from climbing high-rise buildings. That summer was busy, almost all the most significant dominants of the historical center of St. Petersburg were visited (St. Isaac's Cathedral, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, Winter Palace, etc.), but there was always one place that seemed inaccessible - the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

As you understand, we still climbed the Petropavlovka, I want to tell you how we managed to do it.

1. View towards Vasilyevsky Island

Walking through the fortress with Olya and tankizt "oh, we decided to go to the museum of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, but we were refused, they said that the museum was closed, they offered to come another time. Then it was decided to look for other methods of entering the Peter and Paul Cathedral tower. What would happen inside, we did not know what the road to the spire would be like Same.

Quite simply and imperceptibly, Olya and I first found ourselves on the roof of the cathedral, and then went through an open window in the cathedral tower. Then there was a series of spiral and not so spiral staircases, several doors that, to our surprise, were open! We passed by a bunch of bells, a clock mechanism and other interesting things in the hope that the final door to the inside of the spire would not be closed. We were lucky and got to the last spiral staircase, which was already part of the spire. First thoughts - now there will be a hatch, we’ll climb out of it, and then along the external stairs to the Angel! But our hopes were dashed when we heard voices just above us.

It turned out that the watchmaker gave his friends a tour of the spire. People, two at a time, climbed to the very top of the hatch, admired it for several minutes and were replaced by others. Everyone came down happy and talked about their impressions. We decided that we wouldn't lose anything if we went up too. Having waited our turn, we were the last to go up to the watchmaker, said hello and immediately began photographing the views from the hatch. The watchmaker was surprised at us, asked who we were and how we got here. We said briefly - “We are photographers!” This was enough to hear the answer: “I don’t know who you are and how you got here, but you only have five minutes, then I have to leave, I’m already late.”

There was little time, and there was only one lens - 10-20mm, so I was able to shoot little, which I regret - there are beautiful views from there that can be photographed for a long time on a telephoto camera.

2. Frame down

After the spire, we went down with everyone and filmed everything that happened on the way down. Below is a historical background.

3. Towards the Trinity Bridge

May 16, 1703 On the island of Lust-Öland (Yenisaari, Zayachiy) in the Neva delta, the fortress of St. Peter was founded - St. Peter-Burkh. It was intended to protect lands conquered during the Northern War with Sweden. The fortress was built according to a plan drawn up with the participation of Peter himself. According to the rules of fortification art, bastions were erected at its corners. Kronverk became defense from land. By the end of 1703 The earthen walls of the fortress were erected, and in the spring they were made of stone. They received their names from the names of the dignitaries who oversaw the construction. During the reign of Catherine, 2 walls facing the Neva were lined with granite.

In 1712 on the site of the wooden church of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Trezzini founded a stone cathedral in the name of the first supreme apostles Peter and Paul (Petropavlovsky), which became the tomb of the Russian Emperors. All the emperors and empresses from Peter I to Alexander III inclusive were buried in the tomb, with the exception of Peter II, who died in Moscow in 1730, and Ivan VI, who was killed in Shlisselburg in 1764. Based on the name of the cathedral, the fortress began to be called Peter and Paul, and its first name, which sounded in German, St. Petersburg, was transferred to the city.

5. Golovkin Bastion and across the river the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineering Troops and Signal Corps.

In the entire history of the fortress, not a single combat shot was fired from its bastions (although this statement is controversial... during the Great Patriotic War, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and searchlights were placed on the territory of the fortress and they repelled enemy air raids). But the fortress was always ready to repel enemies.

On the territory of the fortress in the Trubetskoy Bastion, the main political prison of Tsarist Russia was located, it functioned from 1872 to 1921. Also in Petropavlovka there is one of the oldest industrial productions in the city - the Mint.

If we talk about the cathedral itself in modern times: the height of the cathedral is 122.5 m, the spire is 40 m, the hatch from which we filmed is located at a height of just over a hundred meters. The cathedral was consecrated on June 28, 1733, services are held according to a special schedule (since the 1990s, memorial services for Russian emperors have been regularly held in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, since 2000 - divine services, since Christmas 2008 services have been held regularly), the rest of the time it functions as a museum.

7. We start to go down

The spire was damaged several times by storms, the first time in 1777, the second in 1829. For the first time, the correction was carried out according to the drawings of the architect. P. Yu. Paton. The new figure of an angel with a cross, based on a drawing by A. Rinaldi, was made by master K. Forshman. The second time, roofer Peter Telushkin carried out repairs without erecting scaffolding. The repairs carried out in October-November 1830 went down in the history of domestic technology as an example of Russian ingenuity and courage.

In 1856-1858 According to the design of engineer D.I. Zhuravsky, instead of a wooden one, a metal spire was built. Inside the spire, a spiral iron staircase leads to a hatch in the casing, located at a height of 100 m above the apple; a six-meter cross with an angel (sculptor R. K. Zaleman) The weather vane angel rotates around a rod installed in the plane of the figure itself. The volumetric parts of the angel are made by electroplating, the remaining parts are stamped from forged copper. Gilding was carried out under the leadership of the chemist G. Struve by the Korotkovs’ artel of merchants. The height of the angel is 3.2 m, the wingspan is 3.8 m.

9. Behind the windows there is a dial with arrows

10. Clockwork

At a height of 16 m, the clock mechanism shaft begins, going up 30 m. Until the 20th century, weights were raised and lowered inside the shaft, ensuring the clock was wound. The clock-chime for the cathedral was made by the Dutch master B. Oort Crass in 1760. With the help of bells, the clock played various melodies.

Now in the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral there is a unique set of bells in quantity and variety; authentic Dutch bells of the 19th-20th centuries, modern Flemish bells. In total, there are about 130 bells in the bell tower.

12. The clock is a chime. It plays 2 melodies, every hour (How glorious is our Lord in Zion) and a melody (God Save the Tsar) at 6 and 12 o'clock. The drum in the photo sets the melody.

During the Great Patriotic War, the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was painted over with gray paint. The camouflage of the spire deprived the fascist artillery of a reference point for conducting targeted fire at the most strategically important objects.

According to the memoirs of M.M. Bobrov, a participant in camouflage work in the winter of 1941-1942, the museum has a “Corner of Besieged Leningrad”, which shows the conditions in which climbers lived in the cathedral under the stairs to the bell tower.

14. Let's go even lower

17. I don’t know where the museum begins and ends, but these and the following photographs were probably taken on its territory.

18. Tower design

19. On the left is how the ascent to the angel was implemented in 1830

20. When we went down to the first floor, we were met by a policewoman who told us at the very beginning that the museum was closed. This time she said smiling, “Well, are you done yet?”, we answered, “That’s it!” and went out to meet the upset Tankman (on the left in the photo). Upset because he didn't climb with us. (But today I saw photos on VKontakte that he also climbed the other day, for which I congratulate him.)

21. That's all. The last photo is for those who don’t know what the Peter and Paul Cathedral looks like from the outside.

Thank you for your attention!

4 am, white nights, bridges are open, I’m sitting with friends on the roof, taking pictures of city views, and we also have a bottle of red wine with us... It’s quiet on the street, and suddenly I hear a beautiful melody; bell and ancient. It took me about five minutes to realize that I understood this - I could hear the notes of the melody “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion.” Yeah, I remembered the composer’s last name - Bortnyansky, which means I hear the clock of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Perhaps, for this reason it was worth climbing onto the roof at night - to take pictures of beautiful views under the melodic ringing of a bell, unexpectedly heard in the night. In general, all that was left to do was to get to the bell tower and look at the clock, ancient bells, tower and spire.

No sooner said than done, and here we are, together with the clockmaker of the chimes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Andrei Aleksandrovich Kudryavtsev, climbing the bell tower. There are 131 bells, part of the so-called Russian ringing, part of the European one. Russian bells are not tuned, because they are initially cast with a certain sound, while European bells are bored after casting and tuned to the desired sound.

With the help of European ringing bells, you can type a series of notes and play melodies from the notes. That’s why the chimes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral contain ancient European bells, cast in Holland and brought to St. Petersburg in 1760. The modern corillon also has bells made by a Dutch company, but the bells that ring during church services are domestic. The sounds of chimes coming from a height of 62 meters. This height was just enough to hear the clock striking within the old city boundaries in the 18th century. And there was clearly less noise in St. Petersburg at that time than now.

The clock sounds every 15 minutes and every hour. Twice a day - at 12 and 18 o'clock - the anthem of the Russian Empire - "God Save the Tsar" - is performed. In 1937, an attempt was made to dial the melody of the Internationale on the clock, but nothing worked, and only in 1952 it was possible to dial the melody of the Anthem of the Soviet Union, which the clock played until 1989.

In general, I was interested not only in seeing the clock and the tower, but also in talking with the keeper. Andrey Alexandrovich has been responsible for this watch since 1998. It was then, after the tragic death of the previous master, that he, as the person most familiar with the structure of the ancient mechanism, was offered this job. Since then, he is ready at any time to overcome the 280 steps of the staircase in the bell tower and promptly eliminate any malfunction if it arises in the mechanical heart of St. Petersburg. After 16 years of work, the master can determine deviations in the operation of the watch even by a slightly changed sound of the chimes and immediately come to the rescue. In addition to the daily worries of cleaning the mechanism, changing the lubricant, and other work on servicing the complex “heart,” the master also needs to be a bit of a musician. It was he who, in 2002, played two melodies on a special musical drum using pegs - “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion” and “God Save the Tsar.” The work was not easy - there are 120 rows (120 musical bars) of 100 holes for pegs on a large musical drum, there are 12,000 in total. But, armed with ancient sheet music from 1858, still stored in the archive, and using the knowledge gained in childhood at the music school, Andrei Alexandrovich coped with this task.

After examining the clock, we rose higher - into the belfry, and after that - even higher - into the spire! Built in 1858 according to the design of military engineer Dmitry Zhuravsky, the openwork metal spire is covered with gilded metal sheets and attached to the stone bell tower building with 16 strands. A very heavy key is stored in the bell tower for tightening the huge nuts of these strands - after all, in a stormy wind, the amplitude of movement of the spire reaches 160 centimeters.

But, according to the watchmaker, this key has never come in handy.

Inside the spire there is an elegant metal staircase, ending with a landing and a small hatch to the outside. It was through it that during the Siege, climbers who worked to camouflage the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress went out onto the outer staircase of the spire. They, weakened from hunger, found it very difficult to do this - for example, they succeeded in climbing at a negative angle onto the “apple” and onto the figure of an angel only after 3 days of unsuccessful attempts. Inside the lantern under the spire you can see St. George's ribbons - they were tied by a participant in that ascent to the spire, the famous climber Mikhail Mikhailovich Bobrov.

While in the flashlight, I never lost the feeling of flying. High windows, sky all around, sun and clouds, thin metal walls of the spire, a spiral staircase “as if into the sky” - I just didn’t want to leave there, I just wanted to put the camera aside and look at the city, at these clouds floating above it, changing states of nature. I felt that I was in the heart of the city, in the historical place where it began, and where its irrational beginning, metaphysics is very well felt. But it was necessary to go down - this was the very case when the descent is more difficult than the ascent. But it seems to me that I will return there again. Necessarily.

What melody does the chimes on the Peter and Paul Cathedral play? Name and who is the author?

The chimes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral are the oldest external clock in the city of St. Petersburg.
This is almost a mechanical computer from the mid-18th century.
Every quarter they sound a quarter chime. Four different musical phrases.
Every hour the melody “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion” is played, and
every six hours - “God save the king.”
And everything happens automatically!”

The famous Dutch watchmaker Bernard Oorto Crass made and brought the chimes and a set of bells to St. Petersburg in 1761. True, the master never got to see his creation in action. The construction of the stone bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, to replace the burnt wooden one, turned into a long-term construction. Crassus was promised to pay the reward only after the clock was installed. The master remained in St. Petersburg, spent all his money on maintaining the mechanism in working order, and a few years later died in poverty. The chimes were launched only in 1776.

The clock mechanism has survived to this day almost unchanged.

True, in 1856 it was overhauled, and minute hands were installed on the dials of the bell tower. Before this, it was only possible to determine the time by chimes only approximately: clockwise and quarter chimes. The only element that has been affected by technical progress is the mechanism for lifting weights; they set the musical drums and the clock itself in motion. For almost two hundred years, four weights weighing 450 kilograms each were lifted manually using a winch. Since the forties of the last century, this work has been performed by an electric motor.

In Soviet times, they tried to teach watches new songs. There was no way that Soviet ideologists could allow “God Save the Tsar” to be heard over Leningrad. And from 1937, the chimes began to play “The Internationale,” and from 1952 to 1989, the anthem of the Soviet Union. True, not every hour, but only four times a day. In addition, apparently for ideological reasons, the chime mechanism was then connected not to the Dutch belfry, as it was before the revolution, but to the Russian one. On Russian bells, unlike Dutch ones, it is impossible to play melodies from notes. They "sound a chord" and are intended exclusively for church chimes. Therefore, while playing “The Internationale” and the anthem of the Soviet Union, the chimes were desperately out of tune. Then for more than ten years the chimes did not sing at all - they only struck the time and quarter chimes.

The melodies originally intended for the chimes sounded again over Peter and Paul Fortress only five years ago.

04.01.2017

The chief watchmaker of St. Petersburg, Andrei Kudryavtsev, told PD about the secrets of ancient mechanisms that have witnessed many historical events in the life of our city.

Before the revolution of 1917, the chimes on the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral were the main clock of the country. Today this is the mechanical heart of St. Petersburg, which beats in unison with the history of the city.

From the first days

In 1720, by order of Peter the Great, a carillon chime with 35 bells, brought by the Tsar from Amsterdam, was installed on the cathedral bell tower in the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first clock tower in St. Petersburg. The clock struck every half hour, and in the morning they played various melodies, which was new to Russia.

The fire of 1756 destroyed the bell tower and the clock mechanism. In 1760, new chimes were made and delivered to St. Petersburg by the famous Dutch master Barend Oort Crass. Moreover, their assembly was completed only in 1776, at which time four dials with a diameter of 2 m were installed. The chimes served until 1853, when the mechanism became unusable. Moscow masters, the Butenop brothers, who had previously created the chimes on the Spasskaya Tower, took on the task of repairing the main clock of the capital. They restored the operation of the damaged clock of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and partially modernized the mechanism. Previously non-existent minute hands appeared on the dials. Until October 1917, the renovated musical chimes played two melodies: “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion” and “God Save the Tsar.” After the revolution, the chimes fell silent for a long time. An attempt made in 1937 to set them up to perform the Internationale was unsuccessful. The chimes played again only in 1952, but this time the USSR anthem. Only in 2002, after an 85-year break, from the bell tower Petropavlovsky The cathedral again sounded “How glorious is our Lord in Zion” and “God save the king.” As Andrey Kudryavtsev said, he restored the musical mechanism of the chimes based on documents preserved in the archives.

Success again

Another work of the master is the clock on the Duma Tower that came to life on November 12, 2014. During the restoration work, the original mechanism drive and bell system were restored. And recently, Andrei Kudryavtsev managed to complete the restoration of the facade tower clock of the Nakhimov School, which stopped about 40 years ago. So far, only a test run of the repaired mechanism has been carried out. The ceremony of launching the ancient chimes is planned synchronously with the midday shot from the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress on January 14. The chimes of the Nakhimov School are the latest installed creation of the world-famous St. Petersburg watch company Friedrich Winter. The company installed more than 60 tower chimes in St. Petersburg alone.

A carillon is a mechanical musical instrument that uses a clock mechanism to force a series of bells to play a melody. In 2001, a carillon of 51 bells with a four-octave range (total weight 15 tons) was installed on the first tier of the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

"Petersburg Diary": What can affect the proper operation of ancient mechanisms?

Andrey Kudryavtsev: First of all, sharp temperature fluctuations and high humidity. Still, the mechanism of a façade clock is a device of impressive size with a large number of metal parts. Only the large musical drum of the chimes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral has a diameter of 2 m and weighs 1.2 thousand kg. However, the clock can lag behind the passage of time or stop altogether, simply by catching something negative from a person. During their long lives, they witnessed many historical events and acquired their own spirit and character. Each mechanism is unique in its own way.

"Petersburg Diary": How would you characterize your students?

Andrey Kudryavtsev: The chimes of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, located in the very center of St. Petersburg, are the mechanical heart of the city. The clock on the Duma Tower is the voice of Nevsky Prospect, and the façade clock in the Nakhimov School is a symbol of the city’s honor. They are installed in the building where future officers, our honor and protection, study.

"Petersburg Diary": Are there still many mechanical watches waiting for their revival in St. Petersburg?

Andrey Kudryavtsev: It’s hard to say, recently there has been a tendency to replace complex mechanical watches with antique-style electric ones. They are much cheaper and do not require constant maintenance. At the same time, the unique mechanisms installed in the 18th and 19th centuries are, at best, preserved, or even remain out of use and silently rust without maintenance.

"Petersburg Diary": How often do you have to check the mechanisms?

Andrey Kudryavtsev: The main clock of the city requires the most attention. If you don’t need to start them - now this process is controlled by four electric motors - then you need to monitor the exact movement almost constantly. The accuracy must be perfect, so when adjusting the mechanism, I focus on the midday shot from the walls of the Naryshkin Bastion, which occurs exactly at noon. The clock on the Duma Tower must be wound manually at least once a week. To do this, you have to lift three weights, each weighing 160 kg, to a height of 20 m.

During the restoration of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 2003, in one day I had to climb to the angel 4 times and to the clock mechanism 6 times. However, if necessary, the mechanism can be controlled even from the ground. The slightest malfunction can be heard if you listen carefully to the voice of the watch.

"Petersburg Diary": What watch do you use?

Andrey Kudryavtsev: None. There is no need for them; over many years of work, I have learned to feel time, its endless, inexorable running.

Text: Andrey Sergeev

July 12 is the day of the holy apostles Peter and Paul. We invite you to take a photo tour of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul of the Peter and Paul Fortress together with the chairman of the Society of Church Bell Ringers, Igor Vasilyevich Konovalov, and find out how the ringing of the tallest bell tower in Russia is arranged and who sang the anthem of the Soviet Union on the church bells.

Surprisingly: Peter the Great, when founding a new capital on the banks of the Neva, first of all erected a bell tower with a very high spire. It is the bell tower, and not some other structure, that is a kind of banner that means that Russia stands firmly on the banks of the Neva.

Many people believe that from an architectural point of view, the Peter and Paul Cathedral was built like a Western church. I think it’s in vain. If we look at it carefully, we will find out that from Western church architecture there is only one element - the pulpit, that is, the elevation at the left altar pillar. A sermon is preached from the pulpit and the Holy Scriptures are read to those in the church, so that the preacher or reader can be clearly seen and heard.


Another noteworthy detail is the carved wooden iconostasis with a rich set of icons. They say it was made somewhat theatrically, in the form of a theatrical set. Perhaps this is true. The iconostasis does not block the entire altar, but the altar curtain fills in the role of the missing wooden parts.

The bell tower of the cathedral, as is canonically customary in Orthodox churches, is located above the western entrance.


It acquired its final form, that is, the way it was before the 1917 revolution, just a few years ago, when a carillon, a musical instrument that uses bells instead of strings, was installed in the lower tier of the bell. It is possible to perform all kinds of secular musical works on it, because the bells are tuned precisely according to the chromatic scale.

Above the carillon is the so-called church bell or, as it is mistakenly called, the “Russian belfry,” although the belfry is not a set of bells, but a bell-bearing structure made in the form of a wall with bells hanging on it.

The bell ringing of the Peter and Paul Cathedral includes one of the heaviest surviving historical bells of St. Petersburg - the 5-ton blagovestnik. This bell was cast under Nicholas II in Gatchina at the Lavrov bell foundry and brought to the cathedral. And at the same factory, medium and small bells of the Russian bell ringing were cast.

Due to some circumstances that are not clear to us now, the church bell ringing of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was in some desolation even before the revolution. Many bells were broken, many hung useless. And the ringing itself was quite “motley”. The history of the largest bell is interesting. It was cast from an old bell, cast under Tsars Ivan Alekseevich and Peter Alekseevich around the 80s of the 17th century. By the will of Tsar Peter the Great, it was moved from somewhere to the new capital, St. Petersburg.

The bell set of the Peter and Paul Cathedral is one of the few that survived the revolution, but most of the bells were melted down in the late 20s and early 30s. The “second wave” of the death of bells is the years of the so-called “thaw”, they are also a period of intensified persecution of the Church.

It is difficult to say why the bells were preserved in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Perhaps they were hanging too high. Or perhaps they were not of particular value for smelting: their total weight was only 8 or 9 tons, which is not much.

Above the Russian church bell, in the octagonal superstructure under the spire, there is another completely unique set of bells - Dutch tuned chimes from the mid to late 18th century, during the reign of Catherine II.
Clockwork

The cathedral spire burned several times, the bells were damaged and broken, but were restored by the will of the emperors and empresses. These bells played the melodies of the clock of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The bells struck the quarters: at 15 minutes - once, at half an hour - twice, at three quarters of an hour - three times. When the hour passed, they played 4 quarters and the hour bell rang out according to the number of hours. Until 1917, they sang “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion” at the beginning of each hour, and at 12 noon the national anthem “God Save the King.” The watch was made in Holland by master Orth Krass.

Under Soviet rule, it was decided that the clock of the Peter and Paul Cathedral should play the anthem of the Soviet Union - “The Indestructible Union of Free Republics.” But local party bodies forbade playing the anthem on the upper bells, specially tuned for playing hour melodies, because they considered it a blatant disgrace to perform the USSR anthem on foreign-made bells.

And an unheard-of decision was made: to use Russian church bells to sing the melody of the anthem of the Soviet Union. They were added in quantity, reweighed, sharpened, connected to a clock mechanism specially made for this purpose... A hammer was attached to a large 5-ton evangelist - and it struck the clock. The USSR anthem was first performed on these bells in 1952.

I heard this performance of the USSR anthem when I was in Leningrad in 1976. The sound was discordant and somewhat reminiscent of the melody of an anthem. But anyone who knew that this was the hymn, of course, could recognize it.

Russian ringing bells, adapted for performance
melodies of the anthem of the Soviet Union

Big bell with
with a clock hammer attached to it


Also because of this adaptation of the bells to the performance of the anthem, today it is difficult to say exactly how many bells of the pre-revolutionary set have been preserved in the cathedral.

There is no more interesting bell tower, on the tiers of which such multifunctional bells would be located - clock bells, church bells and a carillon - in the Russian Church.

As for the carillon, the appropriateness of its presence in the bell tower is an open question. Perhaps Peter I conceived it there at a time when the cathedral had not yet become an imperial tomb.

But then, according to his will, Peter I was buried in the unfinished cathedral (it was consecrated already in the 30s of the 18th century) and over time the cathedral became the tomb of the Russian emperors: all Russian emperors until Alexander III are buried there.

Tombs of Emperor Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna

In September 2006, the ashes of his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna, were transferred to the cathedral, and two loving hearts united in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Tomb of Empress Maria Feodorovna

It is surprising that the graves of Peter III, Paul I, the tombs of Alexander I and Alexander III are constantly decorated with fresh flowers. They are brought by the residents of St. Petersburg themselves, so these are the sovereigns whom the Russian people themselves single out.

And, of course, there are many flowers at the tomb of the founder of the city on the Neva, Emperor Peter I.

Nowadays, sometimes the shutters are opened, the carillonneur sits down at the instrument and plays melodies. For example, last year the famous carillonneur Jo Haazen performed Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances,” which caused our feelings to be somewhat confused: an instrument designed to entertain the crowd does not, to put it mildly, go well with the necropolis.


The restoration of the ringing in the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress began in Soviet times. In 1988, the Association of Bell Art of Russia was founded. The specialists of this AKIR took the initiative in reviving bell ringing at a variety of belfries, which at that time belonged to museums or were under museum management. One of AKIR’s rather high-profile acts was a concert at the bell tower of St. Basil’s Cathedral in 1990 or 1991.

These same specialists, among whom were the late Ivan Vasilyevich Danilov, Valery Lokhansky, Sergei Starostenkov, were engaged in restoring the bells of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. From those bells that could be sounded, that is, those that had tongues and were hung loosely enough to ring, they made a bell ringing system. The tongues of the middle bells were placed on posts, and the tongues were hung from the small ringing bells.

The tongue of the large bell hung freely; in the Soviet years they did nothing with it, but simply attached a clock hammer. However, this tongue swung quickly, the rhythm of the ringing was quite fast.

As a specialist, I really didn’t like the ringing that was revived by AKIR specialists, and largely because the large bell sounded very sharp, loud due to the too fast rhythm.

For three years now, we, specialists from the Society of Church Bell Ringers, have been ringing in the Peter and Paul Fortress during the Moscow Easter Festival. The Cathedral of Peter and Paul has its own bell ringers who ring during services, but it so happened that we never crossed paths with them. Actually, the “owners” of the bell tower are not them, but the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, which manages the Peter and Paul Cathedral. We have good contact with the director of the museum, the curator of the cathedral and the keeper of the bells.

The first thing we did when we arrived at the bell tower was to place a large bell on a pedal in order to be able to set it a rhythm coming from the sound and breathing of the bell itself. The fact is that when ringing from a pedal, the rhythm can vary within any limits.

Surprisingly, the former loud, “barking”, slightly iron ringing was replaced by a very beautiful, “velvety”, not so loud, but very pleasant sound, because the rhythm became slower. And now on the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral it has become possible to reproduce the classical bells of the Russian Church.

We always ring the bells of the Peter and Paul Cathedrals in close cooperation with our dear colleagues - bell ringers from St. Petersburg - Ekaterina Baranova, Andrey Ivanov, Marat Kapranov.

Naturally, we have big creative plans for the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Not all bells that were adapted to play the anthem of the Soviet Union have hanging tongues, not all bells are hung properly, many are permanently attached to the beams, so they cannot be rung today. . It is necessary to make a platform on the bell tower.

The Russian ringing of the Peter and Paul Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress needs reconstruction, decoration, it needs to be brought back to life, so that the bells sound beautiful, loud, and melodic.

Photos of Igor Vasilievich Konovalov

 

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