Mr. John Maddex: In African communities, often drums are used to communicate over long distances. In Russia, from those great, shining domes, bells are used to communicate a liturgical soundscape without parallel in all of the world: Russian bells, played like drums as percussion. Stay tuned, as we learn about the bells! [Bells]

Bell-ringing in the Orthodox Church is a lot more than a call to worship or an announcement of various parts of the service to those who are absent. It’s really an important liturgical art form, like iconography or architecture. Sometimes, bells are even called “singing icons.” On Ancient Faith Radio today, we have an educational treat. We’re going to learn about the peal of the bells. [Bells]

Narrator: For 70 years under communism, Russia’s church bells were tongue-tied and silent. Now they’re pealing once again. This is the ringing tone of the Russian Orthodox faith, of history and of ritual. It is also the ancient call to prayer. High above the congregation of St. Tatiana’s Church in central Moscow, Anya Chikushenya’s bells punctuate the Sunday service. By profession, Anya’s a teacher; by vocation, she’s a bell-ringer, a secret ambition she’s had since she was a little girl.

Ms. Anya Chikushenya: Every Russian person loves bells. It’s something in our soul, and we hear bell-ringing since our childhood, even maybe in fairy tales we read about them. So I think it’s something in our nature.

Narrator: Anya is still a novice, so twice a week she comes here, to the Moscow Bell Center, a school in a church belfry where aspiring ringers learn the ropes. [Bells]

Ms. Chikushenya: [Laughter] It’s much harder than it looks!

Narrator: But once you get the hang of it, say experienced ringers, it brings all kinds of rewards, both spiritual and practical. Viktor Vasilievich, who helps run the bell school, swears that the soundwaves from the bells keep dust off the church icons and even kill germs.

Mr. Viktor Vasilievich: And, you know, the sound of a bell, it creates a special atmosphere around the church. During these five years, I never catch a cold, you see. That’s true! [Bells]

Narrator: The art of Russian bell-ringing was almost lost forever in the 1920s after the Russian Revolution. A wave of anti-religious violence destroyed thousands of Russian churches and shattered their bells.

Not many of those old bells are left, and certainly not enough to meet modern demand. There’s a religious renaissance going on in Russia, and some 20,000 churches are under reconstruction, like the one behind me. All of them are going to want their own bells. Across the country, factories are being converted as metal-workers rediscover the old techniques of bell casting.

In the Tutayev Agricultural Repair Shop, these hands used to fix tractors. [Factory sounds] Today they create brand-new bells which command top-dollar. [Bells]

Many of Russia’s poorer churches, though, can’t afford anything this elaborate. [Bells] So they’ve turned to a simpler—some would say sweeter-sounding alternative: the bilo, basically just plates of titanium. This is a concert to celebrate the beginning of Lent. It’s a team effort, but Pavel Markelov is the lead player. In Russian bell-ringing circles, he’s a master. But, pretty as this music is, Pavel says only traditional bells express the depth and complexity of the Russian soul.

Mr. Pavel Markelov (in translation): The sound of the bells is the foundation of all music. The great Russian composers—Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky—they knew that. It’s a raw, emotional connection. [Bells]

Narrator: Here’s the virtuoso in his element, atop the rickety, rusty bell tower of the Pokrovsky Cathedral in central Moscow. [Bells] Traditional bell-ringing is not really about melody; it’s about rhythm. And great bell-ringers, like great jazz musicians, are brilliant improvisers. Pavel Markelov is the Miles Davis of the bell tower. [Bells]

Obviously, this is not something you can practice at home, so the current class of the Moscow Bell Center is glad to escape the practice bells of the classroom to rehearse on the 300-year-old bells in the ancient monastery of Rostov-Veliky, a hundred miles from Moscow. [Bells] The center’s director coaxes them on as they try to learn the local peals. Every church has its own signature pieces, instantly identifiable to members of the parish. The bells can ring sadly, solemnly, or joyously on a good day, but sometimes the students don’t get it quite right. [Bells]

The highlight of this trip is the chance to ring one of the granddaddies of Russian bells, the 35-ton Sysoi, named after a 17th century bishop who commissioned it. Sysoi’s mighty sound can literally sweep you off your feet.

Mr. Markelov (in translation): When you ring it, it’s not only beautiful; it fills you with energy, and it’s tremendously symbolic: a rite of passage. Ringing Sysoi makes you a real bell-ringer.

Narrator: The alumni of the Moscow Bell Center, now veterans of Sysoi, will be ringing in their own churches this Easter morning, celebrating not only the resurrection of Christ, but the revival of this sacred Russian sound. [Bells]

Mr. Maddex: Our thanks to Creative Video Studios in San Bruno, California, for the soundtrack of the DVD we just heard. And coming up still on our feature today is an interview with Mark Galperin of Blagovest Bells. Don’t go away. [Bells]

Mr. Maddex: Very Rev. Fr. Stephan Meholick is rector of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in San Anselmo, California.

Very Rev. Fr. Stephan Meholick: The little parish that I grew up in in western Pennsylvania didn’t have a church bell, and by the time I was 14 or 15, I have searched all over the town to try to find vacant churches, schoolhouses, mills, places that had bells that we could salvage. And so I did. Got together with the priest who actually wasn’t so interested in that, but convinced him and convinced him how important it was. Our church sat at the top of the hill, and when its bells began to ring every day, daily services began to be an important part of the church life. When I went to my parish in Rhode Island, my very first parish in 1979, again, we had one little bell about the size of that middle one there on the bottom row, and I thought, “Well, this isn’t going to do.” Here again, our church is on Cumberland Hill and we sit up atop of a hill, and we began a whole salvage process again, scouring all over that part of New England to find available bells—and we did! We put them together, and it was catch-as-catch-can and mix-and-match, but we put together church bells.

But when we got to San Anselmo and I began to talk to Mark Galperin and the people from Expanding Edge, then I, for the first time in my life, there was the possibility to have the real thing, and Mark put me in contact with the Pyatkov Company in Kamensk-Uralsky, and when we first began to acquire those set of bells, I knew instinctively: This is the real thing.

Mr. Maddex: We caught up with Mark Galperin, who was referred to by Fr. Stephan, at the Antiochian Convention in Dearborn, Michigan.

Mr. Mark Galperin: Blagovest means, for those who speak Slavic languages, it’s pretty much clear that blagovest is “good news.” This name is used in Russia for the bell-pealing which is calling Orthodox people for service. Blagovest Bells is bells which proclaim blago vest: of good news. Our clients are, in most cases, churches and monasteries, convents. In very rare cases, we have a couple of retired priests who made chapels next to their homes. And bells render their part of divine services, for liturgies, vespers, matins, for all divine services, they do the joy. Our mission is to bring bells to this country and to resurrect their canonical service for the Church.

Mr. Maddex: Let’s talk about that. Most of us, particularly those of us who are converts to Orthodoxy, really don’t have a grasp of the role of the bells in our worship. Can you talk about that?

Mr. Galperin: The beginning of a service is started with prayer of bell-ringer, which is probably the first prayer of the service. That is the bell-ringer’s typikon, which says which prayer in which sequence should be prayed before he unties the rope. And then, when this cycle—it’s about five, seven; I would say seven minutes of prayers—is done, then the bell-ringer would read Psalm 50 and hit the biggest bell of the set. He rings this big bell once, and then he reads again the Psalm 50, and rings this bell a second time. So he does twelve times. It takes about, so twelve minutes before service. And then he reads Creed, and then every element of the Creed follows with the hit of a bell, strike of the bell.

Therefore, you see that first part of this blagovest lasts three minutes of the 15 preceding the service, goes a joyful pealing which has the name “trezvon” in Russia, which is preceding divine services as Prophet and King David encouraged us to make joyful noise for the Lord. And then the divine service is started with the council peal of the bells, when all bells together, three times, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, striking all together once, second, and third time. And then, “Blessed is the kingdom…” is the beginning of the Liturgy.

And then, in the same manner, when the bell-ringer reads the Creed and peals the big bell, the same when the people will read the Creed, he also rings the same big bell. And when the mystery of Communion has happened, symbolized or punctuated with the strike of big bell. And then we have special bell patterns for meeting the bishop, if any, coming before service. We have special patterns for burial, for funeral, for weddings, for Pascha.

You have to learn to ring bells nicely. Every priest before allowed to serve liturgy has extensive liturgical education. He usually studies four years or more, and then he trains and he serves liturgies. The same is related to bells, because you can’t make a mess of Divine Liturgy, divine service—any divine services, whether matins or vigils doesn’t matter. The same with bells, you need to study how to ring them nicely, when to ring them.

Fr. Ted Pisarchuk in the Fourteenth Council of the Orthodox Church of America in Toronto, Canada, he shared this wonderful story. The story is this, that the parish of St. Nicholas in San Anselmo, located in several hundred yards from theology seminary of San Francisco—it’s focused in seminary. And one of the students there was Elaine Mayor, and she told Fr. Ted she was in the library studying. Whenever she was there she heard in time ringing of bells! Finally, she came to the stand: What is this wonderful thing happened with this tiny church here with joyful noise as prophet said? And she came there and she got in Orthodoxy; she was caught. She was trapped! And after she graduated from this seminary, she was transferred to St. Vlad, and now she graduated St. Vlad Seminary, Orthodox seminary, and this is the way how bells might work in soul of people.

Mr. Maddex: Well, another example of what we said right at the very beginning! Blagovest, the evangelists, the good-news tellers. And there’s the story of the bells. Well, we’ve been talking with Mark Galperin, general manager of Blagovest Bells, and we promised a website, which is very simple: it’s russianbells.com; www.russianbells.com, if you would like more information about Blagovest Bells or about Mark Galperin, their general manager. Mark, we want to thank you very much for your time and for the history lesson on the mission of bells.

Mr. Galperin: Thank you very much for your time, John. I appreciate it. [Bells]