The project was recently completed with the digital release of a collection of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century carillon music originating from the Parochialkirche in Berlin. By chance, a set of entirely handwritten music books was discovered in the cupboard of a former pastor: fourteen notebooks, comprising around six hundred pages of music by various composers. They mainly contain arrangements of sacred works such as chorales, psalm tunes, and Lutheran hymns, alongside a number of secular preludes and fugues. The pieces were arranged by the Parochialkirche’s first carillonist, Arnold Carsseboom, and his successors Andreas Seidel, Georg Friederich Seelig, and the father and son Kaufmann. The two-part texture of these arrangements, a frequent feature, gives the bells a clear and resonant sound.

Thanks to Anna Kasprzycka, the current carillonist of the Parochialkirche, the sources could be transported to Leuven for digitization by the Alamire Digital Lab. The images are now available for consultation on the IDEM website.