The University of Tampa in Florida, USA, is home to the world’s largest Ars Sonora, a 30-meter-high artistic-musical work composed of 63 bells supported by stainless steel custom hollow sections and connected to three different keyboards, each of which reproduces a different sound and thus a different musical note.
The bells were made by the Paccard Foundry, a company that has been producing this type of product since 1796 and represents excellence in this field, the entire project was overseen by Pierre Paccard and his son, Thomas in Quintal, France, where the first bell produced by Antoine Paccard, the company’s founder and Pierre’s ancestor, still rings.
The goal of the project was to create a campus plaza where alumni from around the world could gather day and night, thanks to the surrounding lighting, to study, meditate or simply chat, as well as participate in musical events organized by the campus music faculty.
The project was strongly supported and funded by John Sykes and his wife. Active in the Tampa Bay community, Mr. Sykes is a member of the Board of Trustees and chairman emeritus of The University of Tampa, where the Sykes College of Business is named in his honor.
The great Ars Sonora project supported by stainless steel
Paccard bells, due to their unique profile that seamlessly blends bronze with metal and rings perfect tunes, are considered the “bells of Stradivari.”
Each one is also individually designed to play a specific note: a tuner precisely adjusts the bell’s harmonics by carving the inside of the bell, slightly reducing its thickness to achieve musical perfection.
The Paccard tuning method requires precision and patience, as the tuner must continually take breaks in the carving process to test the bell’s harmonics. This handcrafted process has been in use for more than two centuries and creates the exact musical quality for which these bells are known for across the world.
The bells are electronically connected to a sensitive piano keyboard, and each key controls a dynamic beat on a particular bell, allowing musicians to play with all the nuance and emotion that an artist can offer.
Over the course of these 200 years, the concept of Ars Sonora has been carried forward first in the minds of the Paccard family and then finally realized through the technologies that have gradually brought this grandiose project to fruition.
When the musician strikes a note on the keyboard, a signal travels from a control room in Sykes Chapel and the Center for Faith and Values, through underground cables, to the junction boxes at the base of Ars Sonora and then up 30 meters into the hollow sections of the rectangular stainless steel tubes used to support the entire structure until it reaches every single bell in this marvelous work of art. In total, nearly 10 kilometers of cables connect the keyboard to each of the 61 dynamic bell clappers, the 4 clappers, the 4 counterweights, the 4 swinging bell motors, and the 147 lights in the sculpture that can create a visual and musical spectacle.
The use of stainless steel in a music instrument
The project has began in 2016 when we’ve been asked from our customer to supply 5.2 tons of custom polished stainless steel 316L hollow profiles, manufactured with laser welding technology.
We chose cold-rolled sheets as raw material for the production of these special profiles, to have an excellent quality of surface finish of the two components needed to assemble these curved tubes. The top and bottom part of the tubes have been laser cutted from cold-rolled sheet metal, with a curve radius of 7,700 mm, while the other sheets were laser cut and then calendered to allow for a weld that would ensure sharp-edged corners, thanks to our laser welding technology, which has enabled us to achieve the aesthetic quality desired by the customer.
After grinding off the weld seams, the profiles were sent to one of our German partners to carry out the satin-finishing process, according to the customer’s specifications. The profiles were then coated with a protective plastic film to preserve their surfaces and then sent back to us for a final quality inspection.
As for shipping, non-standard size packaging was used. We wrapped the calendered profiles in several layers of bubble wrap before placing them in wooden boxes and delivering them in a single shipment, as per the customer’s request. Our profiles were shipped to Chambèry, France, where a team of experts assembled them together with the bells, a labor intensive process that lasted one month.
After everything was assembled, there was the first test run that saw the entire project take shape for the first time, thrilling everyone present, including the Sykes family, who had flown over from Florida just for that special moment.
Once completed and tested, the tower was disassembled and shipped by sea in as many as nine containers to Tampa, where it was then reassembled in just 10 days using the experience gained in Chambery.
Conclusion
A multidisciplinary team of consultants and University staff were responsible for planning and developing the infrastructure for the installation of Ars Sonora on site, which includes the creation of a surrounding fountain and plaza.
This extraordinary team, consisting of engineers, contractors, lighting specialists, fountain designers, and other professionals, worked diligently to bring Ars Sonora to the University and the Tampa Bay community.
The opening ceremony took place on Saturday October 8 2022 with its 63 working bells being played on a piano keyboard in sync with vocalists and the UT brass quartet. Amost the large audience, enjoying the spectacle were John and Susan Sykes and the Principal Ron Vaughn.
We are proud to have participated in this project where so many industry leaders have joined forces for one goal: to give the University of Tampa and all its students the greatest Ars Sonora in the world.