Tubular Bells: Orchestral Chimes from Verdi to The Exorcist

Note on Wikidata IDs: the original work-spec listed Q136652191 for tubular bells; that QID describes a 1986 video game, not the instrument. The Wikipedia article for the instrument is associated instead with Q178812 (label “tubular bell”, description “musical instruments in the percussion family”), and that ID is used here. Verified via the REST summary’s wikibase_item field for Tubular_bells.

Overview

Tubular bells (also called chimes, orchestral chimes, orchestral bells, or tubular chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubular_bells). Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillons, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were in fact designed to duplicate the sound of cast church bells within an orchestral ensemble at a fraction of the size and cost. Each bell is a vertical metal tube, between 30 and 38 mm in diameter, tuned by altering its length. Wikidata Q178812 describes the instrument as “musical instruments in the percussion family” (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178812).

The standard sounding range is C5–F6, with many professional instruments reaching G6; an extended-range version goes from B♭4 to G6, and bass chimes drop further to F4–B4. Modern convention is to treat tubular bells as a transposing instrument like the xylophone and glockenspiel: the part is written one octave below sounding pitch.

Origin and history

Cast church bells of orchestral pitch are massive (a single C5 cast bronze bell can weigh hundreds of kilograms) and quickly became impractical to transport into the opera pit. From the mid-19th century, instrument makers began to experiment with tuned metal tubes hung in a frame as a portable substitute. The instrument first appears in the orchestral repertoire in Giuseppe Verdi‘s Rigoletto (1851), then in his Il trovatore (1853) and Un ballo in maschera (1859). By the late 19th and early 20th centuries it had spread into Russian, French, German, English, Italian, and American orchestral writing. Major specialist makers from the 20th century onwards include J.C. Deagan, Adams, Yamaha, Jenco, and Premier Percussion.

Construction and materials

A tubular-bell instrument consists of a row of vertical brass or steel tubes, suspended in a tall wooden or metal frame. Each tube is closed at one end (sometimes by a cap), and tuned by precise machining of its length: the longer the tube, the lower the pitch. Tubes are normally 30–38 mm in outside diameter; bass chimes are wider. The tubes are arranged like a piano keyboard — naturals to the front, sharps and flats to the back — and a damper bar with a foot-operated sustain pedal sits behind the natural row, lifting felt from all the tubes simultaneously when the player presses down.

The tubes provide a purer tone than the solid cylindrical chimes used in instruments like the mark tree. Acoustically, tubular bells are unusual: modes 4, 5, and 6 of the tube vibration determine the perceived strike tone, with frequencies in approximately the ratios 9²:11²:13² (i.e. 81:121:169). These ratios are near — but not exactly — the harmonic ratios 2:3:4, so the ear extracts a “virtual pitch” one octave below the fourth mode and accepts the tubular bell as definitively tuned even though the partial structure is inharmonic.

Studio chimes, used in recording and educational settings, are similar in appearance but use tubes of smaller diameter, producing a quieter and slightly thinner tone.

Playing technique

Tubular bells are usually struck on the top edge of the tube — never on the side — with a hammer that has a head of rawhide or hard plastic. The strike point matters: hitting too far from the top changes the relative strength of the modes and degrades the perceived strike pitch.

The instrument has a long natural sustain, so the player normally damps each note with the sustain pedal between strikes. For dramatic effect, very loud high-pitched overtones can be excited by drawing a violin or cello bow across the bottom of the tube — a technique used in some 20th-century scores.

Despite the instrument’s full chromatic range, tubular bells rarely play melody in orchestral writing. They are used mostly as a colour added to the ensemble sound, as the imitation of a passing bell, or as a single sustained pedal stroke at a moment of dramatic punctuation. Solo passages are most often calls or peals in deliberate imitation of church bells.

Cultural context

Tubular bells became one of the standard symbols of the late-Romantic and 20th-century orchestra. Their imitation of church bells gives them an almost sacred or funerary association in concert repertoire, and their sound is instantly recognisable in Tchaikovsky‘s 1812 Overture (1880) and in the climaxes of Mahler‘s Symphony No. 2 (1895).

Beyond classical music, tubular bells reached vast popular audiences through the British multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield, whose 1973 debut album Tubular Bells provided the musical theme for the 1973 film The Exorcist. Oldfield discovered a set of tubular bells at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire — left there by John Cale — at the start of his “solo symphony” recording project in 1972, and built the title track around them.

Notable repertoire and examples

• Verdi: Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), Un ballo in maschera (1859) — the earliest orchestral uses.
• Russian opera and ballet: Modest Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov (1869, 1872, 1874); Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (1880).
• Italian verismo opera: Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana (1890); Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pagliacci (1892); Puccini, Tosca (1900) and Turandot (1926).
• Late Romantic and early modern symphonic: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (1895); Holst, The Planets (1914–1916); Scriabin, Le Poème de l’extase (1908); Debussy, Ibéria (1910); Webern, Six Pieces for large orchestra (1909–10); Varèse, Ionisation (1931); Hindemith, Symphonic Metamorphosis (1944); Britten, Albert Herring (1945); Copland, Symphony No. 3 (1946); Messiaen, Turangalîla-symphonie (1946–48) and Chronochromie (1959–60); Carl Orff, Antigonae (1949); Shostakovich, Symphony No. 11 (1957); Arvo Pärt, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977).
• Popular music: Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells (1973) and the theme for The Exorcist.
• Other uses: Pipe organs are often equipped with a “Chimes” stop that plays a set of tubular bells via electric or pneumatic action; tubular bells are also used as actual church bells (e.g. at St. Alban’s Anglican Church, Copenhagen, donated by King Charles III when Prince of Wales) and inside longcase clocks because they project more loudly than gongs or chime rods.

Comparison with related instruments

FAQ

Q1. Why do tubular bells sound like church bells if they’re just tubes?
Because the human ear extracts a “virtual pitch” from the inharmonic upper partials of the tube. Modes 4, 5, and 6 dominate the perceived strike tone, with frequencies in ratios approximately 9²:11²:13² — close enough to 2:3:4 for the brain to assign a single fundamental and treat the result as a definite pitch, much as it does with cast church bells (whose partial structure is also famously inharmonic).

Q2. Are tubular bells a transposing instrument?
Yes — by modern convention, tubular bells are written one octave below sounding pitch, the same convention used for the xylophone and glockenspiel (though those sound higher still than written).

Q3. What’s the difference between tubular bells and studio chimes?
Studio chimes are essentially a smaller, lighter, less expensive set of tubular bells: each tube has a smaller diameter than the corresponding tube on full orchestral chimes, producing a quieter and thinner sound suitable for recording studios.

Q4. Where should the player strike the tube?
On the top edge of each tube, with a rawhide or hard-plastic-headed mallet. Striking elsewhere weakens the dominant modes and the perceived strike tone becomes ambiguous.

Q5. Did Mike Oldfield really play tubular bells on the famous album?
Yes — Oldfield found a set of tubular bells at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire (left by John Cale from a previous session) at the start of his 1972 solo project, and used them as the climactic timbre and the title of the resulting album, Tubular Bells (1973), which then provided the theme music for The Exorcist.

Featured image: “Tubular-bells.JPG” — a set of orchestral tubular bells (chimes); CC BY-SA 3.0, uploaded by Bjornredtail at English Wikipedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Tubular-bells.JPG). Sources: Wikipedia “Tubular bells” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubular_bells); Wikidata Q178812 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178812); Wikipedia “Mike Oldfield”; Wikipedia “The Planets”; Wikipedia “Symphony No. 2 (Mahler)”.