GLOUCESTER -- The bells of Our Lady of Good Voyage Parish in Gloucester can only be accessed by a small wooden door, opened with force by a rusty key.

 

The door opens to a two-story shaft barely the width of a human body -- four stone walls with a skinny metal ladder. Going up the ladder takes one to a cramped crawlspace, then it's up another wooden ladder to the belfry. The cool coastal air swirls around the 31 bells, cast by the Taylor Foundry in England and brought to the U.S. in 1922. The bells cost $10,000 (roughly $192,000 in today's money) and would have been subject to a 35 percent tariff on musical instruments if not for Gloucester resident and U.S. Representative A. Piatt Andrew. He managed to get the bells exempt from the tariff with a bill signed by President Warren G. Harding. As a thank you, Andrew's name is written on one of the bells. Most of them are named after saints and local bishops. The largest, Sao Joaquim, weighs 2,200 pounds. A series of wires connects the bells to Our Lady's crown jewel -- its carillon.

The carillon is a musical instrument that can best be described as a pipe organ for bells, but even that fails to do it justice. There are only 170 traditional (non-automatic) carillons in the U.S. Our Lady's is the only Catholic church in Massachusetts that has one, and it has no plans to automate. It's located in a tight space of dust and cobwebs, up a steep stepladder beside the choir loft. For Cindy Cafasso, a carillonneur at Our Lady's for 30 years, climbing the stepladder is the least unnerving part of her performances.

"I don't know how Quasimodo felt," she joked. "I like Quasimodo. I feel very secure up here, and I feel very much at home and very safe. I feel like I'm surrounded by saints and angels and the Holy Family."

She is. Facing the carillon is a stained-glass window of St. Anthony, which envelops Cafasso's face in its gleam. To her left is a window of St. Therese of Lisieux. There are photos of the church's history, including one of John D. Rockefeller visiting, and guestbooks dating back to 1986.

"It was such a privilege, I would say, to be able to play this," she said. "It's a joy, and it's also intimidating, in some respects, because the whole community can hear you."

Cafasso played a selection of hymns and secular tunes on the carillon after Mass on Aug. 15, the feast of the Assumption. Hers is an instrument of great physical force and exquisite delicacy. She wore a steely look of determination on her face as she slammed on the wooden dowels with the full power of her slender arms, each thrust moving tons of metal high above her. It's a good workout, she said. There are 31 dowels, one for each bell. Each is connected to rods that then connect to wires going up to the bells.

For carillonneur LuAnn Pallazola, the strain is more mental than physical.

"It takes more energy to play it, but to focus and hit the right mallet is the tricky part," she said.

Pallazola, also Our Lady's organist, has played the carillon for 10 years and also performed on Aug. 15. Her setlist featured patriotic songs, oldies, and television theme songs like "Hawaii Five-O" and "The Addams Family." Pallazola likes involving the audience in her performances. When she plays a song like "If You're Happy and You Know It," listeners honk their car horns in response. Cafasso prefers traditional hymns, folk songs, and classical pieces.

For a quarter century, Pallazola was a lounge singer and pianist, performing jazz and pop standards in bars.

"But then I started playing in churches, and that's all I do," she said.

Playing in church gives her a different kind of fulfillment. Her mother told her to "play with feeling," and that's what she tries to do. She grew up in Gloucester, hearing Our Lady's bells every day.

"I love the sound of it," she said.

She typically plays wearing gloves to protect her hands but removed them to perform for The Pilot.

Pallazola played barefoot, having to remove her sandals to climb the stepladder. This isn't a problem, because she doesn't usually play the organ-like pedals attached to the carillon.

"If I went to a carillon school, they'd insist that I play the pedals," she said.

She practices on a separate carillon on the other side of the choir loft. She can't practice on the main one "because it would be too loud and you would make a lot of mistakes."

A carillon's dowels are like the keys of a pipe organ, she said, but the feel is very different from a keyboard.

"To be able to hit the keys in the right places is difficult," she said.

Our Lady's is the oldest tuned carillon in the U.S. A carillon must be tuned in the factory. To tune it again, it would have to be taken apart and returned to the manufacturer. A carillon technician comes every few years to adjust the springs and levers. A good carillon repairman is hard to find these days, Cafasso said, but she likes the man from the Midwest who does it for the parish.

Unlike a keyboard, it is impossible to hold a carillon note. Once it is played, it disappears. In the loft, the pounding mechanism drowns out the harmony of the bells. Outside, the sound is pure. Cafasso's favorite bell is Santa Joana d'Arc.

"I have always loved the sound of bells," she said, adding: "To me, they're very expressive, and they almost feel like the music of Heaven."

She was taught in the ways of the carillon by Father Claudius Nowinski, former music director of Our Lady's. She channels her emotions into her music, especially sadness since the death of her husband William Donaldson in 2023.

"Many of the songs that I choose are those that talk about resting in peace, going across to the other shore, the joy that is in death or in going home to the Lord," she said.

Prominent Boston-based composer Mary Bichner visited the carillonneurs on Aug. 15 to research a piece she plans to write for the instrument. The sound of the neighborhood carillon was the backdrop to her childhood in Philadelphia. Bichner has synesthesia, which causes her to perceive musical notes as colors and vice versa. The colorful stained-glass windows of the parish reminded her of A-flat. She is considering writing the piece in that key. This was her first time being in the same room as a carillon, and she was thrilled.

"It's very, very beautiful," she said. "It's such an experience to be in the space as well, not just to hear the recording, but to hear a human being playing."