WASHINGTON — This Easter Sunday, Robert Grogan will do what he has done every Sunday for more than 60 years — climb 208 steps up a spiral staircase into the tower of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to play a hidden concert for all below. 

The first and only Knights Tower carillonneur, Grogan has manually played the 56-bell carillon at the basilica every week since 1964. At 85 years old, he’s not tired of it yet.

“It’s worth the trek up here,” the musician said, seating himself at the keyboard of the instrument on Palm Sunday and opening his carefully arranged red binder of music.

The Knights Tower at the basilica is home to one of fewer than 200 carillons in the country. The percussion instrument consists of 56 chromatic bells played by striking wooden manual keys and pedal keys on a keyboard that looks something like that of an organ. The tower houses two chambers of cast bronze bells at levels of 172 feet and 223 feet, and the “playing cabin” of the carillonneur sits between the two tiers at 200 feet, according to the basilica website. 

This carillon sits higher than most because the bells must be heard over the roof and nave of the basilica to reach the nearby campus of The Catholic University of America, where Grogan earned his Doctor of Musical Arts in organ and taught music over the years.

“You can hear it throughout the neighborhood around the shrine on Sunday afternoons,” said Dee Steel, director of visitor services at the National Shrine.

To reach the cabin, Grogan must take the elevator up to the sixth floor of the basilica, cross the organ loft, and climb up an inclined ladder through a trap door before he even gets to the open-air spiral staircase winding through the belfry. 

“I have the highest office in the city,” he said.

Once seated at the carillon, he slips Band-Aids and finger protectors onto his pinky fingers to help absorb the shock of striking the keys. When the clock on the wall reads 10 past one o’clock and the noon Mass begins to let out, he brings the bells to life with his fingers, fists and feet.

“They’re widely spaced keys, both manual and pedal, so you strike them or press them down with your hand,” Grogan said. “If you’re playing fast in the manual, you know, you use two fists and hand over hand and so on to go up and down scales. Usually, you’re playing in three voices: right and left hand and pedal. But you can open a hand and play four.”

Donated by the Knights of Columbus, the bells themselves range two octaves and vary in weight from 21 pounds to 7,200 pounds. Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle blessed the bells at the basilica in July 1963, and they rang for the first time in September of that year. Manufactured cooperatively by Paccard in Annecy-Le-Vieux, France, and Petit and Fritsen of Aarle-Rixtel, Netherlands, each bell is named for a saint or historical figure and inscribed with text written in the voice of the namesake. The largest bell, named for the Virgin Mother, bears the following inscription:

Mary is my name.

Mary is my sound. 

Beloved Mother 

Queen of Heaven and Earth 

Queen of this dear land 

for knights to God and country bound 

and all who hear my voice 

I sing the praises of God.

The Mary bell (B flat), and two others — St. Michael (D) and St. Edward (F) — are mounted as swinging bells and can be controlled electronically from a control room in the organ loft. Grogan will peal the bells from this room during the Gloria at the Easter vigil Mass on Saturday. Most of the carillon bells only ring when the carillonneur plays them manually.

Due to the harmonics of the bells, not every tune will sound right when transcribed exactly from organ or choral music to carillon, Grogan said. He transcribes most of the music for the carillon himself, planning his Sunday recital throughout the week. 

“You have to be careful about the way you space chords out and notate for carillon because otherwise you can end up with kind of sour harmonies,” he said.

Bells have a minor third harmonic, he explained, while other instruments have a major third harmonic in each tone. Play the tones too close together, and the harmonies clash. Space them over two octaves instead, and the bells yield a pleasant, logical sound. 

It was this peculiar musical feature that first drew Grogan to carillon while studying organ at the University of Kansas in his home state. He studied at the university under America-school carillonneur Ronald Barnes, who later went on to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. 

“The first time I heard [carillon music] he was playing the school song, and it sounded awful on the carillon because of that major third business,” Grogan said. “But he didn’t care.” 

Barnes cared more for sacred music, and so does Grogan. 

When Barnes moved to Washington National Cathedral as carillonneur, Grogan followed him shortly afterward as a fellow of the College of Church Musicians at the National Cathedral and continued to study carillon. One year later, he auditioned at the basilica, got the job, and never left. In addition to carillon, Grogan played organ for the basilica for 34 years before retiring in 2008.

The basilica quickly became central for Grogan and his family. It was there that he converted to Catholicism and met his wife, Charlotte, who sang in the choir at the time. The couple now has four adult children and multiple grandchildren.

Grogan’s youngest daughter, Anne Phelps, remembers visiting the basilica with her dad as a kid, climbing the tower, and sometimes sitting next to him at the keyboard while he played.

“I used to love going up to the tower,” she said. “Just the spiral staircase was always fascinating to me and adventurous.”

Now, she and her two sisters take turns accompanying their dad for his Sunday recitals, watching from the side of the playing cabin on a bench he hauled up the staircase decades ago. 

“We all took piano, but none of us ever really picked up the skills,” Phelps said when asked if she ever tried her hand at the instrument. “I don’t know if it was for lack of talent or if we didn’t practice enough.” 

She said she gets emotional now when she hears his music. Many people who hear the bells while walking the basilica grounds assume they’re listening to a recording, she said. They don’t realize how much technical skill is at play. She said she enjoys sharing her father’s art with others, inviting neighbors and friends to hear him perform.

“It’s a very unique instrument,” she said. “I hope it continues and it’s not automated. Because I do think it’s special that someone can play, and he’s so talented. I hope there will be more carillonneurs who will continue to play and learn from my dad and be inspired.” 

Much of the nuance of the music is lost on an automated or electric carillon, Grogan said. 

“Electric carillons, you play a note, and it goes ‘ding’ — the same volume, no matter which note you play, it’s all the same volume,” he said. 

Playing manually, the musician can bring out melodies through variations in volume — striking the manual keys softly and the pedals with more force, or the other way around.

“It makes a big difference,” he said. “You know it’s music being played and not some machine.”

But he is not worried. If anything, carillon is growing in the music community, he said, and he is confident younger generations in the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, of which he is a longtime member, will carry on the legacy. 

Each week, he arranges a binder of music for that Sunday that loosely follows the order of the Mass. When he’s finished, the next carillonneur will have a setting of music to play between the noon and afternoon liturgies every Sunday of the year. 

“Whenever I do fully retire, it’ll probably be because it’s too hard to get up there,” he said. 

But for now, he makes the climb.

Moira Gleason is a journalism student from Hillsdale College currently based in Washington, D.C.