The loveliest tune ever written immortalises Professor Bob Carter

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• published: 08 Mar 2016
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The loveliest bell-tune ever written immortalizes the great Professor Bob Carter Professor Robert Carter of James Cook University, who died in January 2016, has been immortalized in a clock-tune written by one of his friends in the manner of a Turmuhrglockenspielsonatine by the Baroque German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. This poignant but merry tune has been described as "the loveliest bell-tune ever written". Traditionally, the Classical composers wrote clock-tunes to commemorate the weddings or funerals of their friends. In this version, originally scored for concert performance on the piano, Bob Carter's Peal is played on the carillon of Ghent Cathedral. Lou Mackenzie, the acoustician who electronically tuned the waveforms of each of the bells, has achieved a splendid balance between retuning these ancient angel voices and retaining their charming character. The oldest of the Ghent bells, approaching 1000 years old, had a hole drilled in it at some point in its history, perhaps so that its tone could be clearly distinguished from that of the other bells, so that it could be used as an alarum-bell. The distinctive gravelly clonk as this bell is struck can be heard once or twice during the piece. Since the EPROMs on early carillons took the form of giant drums with movable cams, playing a tune of any complexity required a very large drum, like that at Ghent. A clock-tune or Uhrspielsonatine such as Bob Carter's Peal was traditionally written in four short movements, one for each quarter hour. A short theme is played in the first quarter and is developed at double the length in the second quarter. A further development of the theme occupies two-thirds of the third quarter and is followed immediately by a reprise of the original theme. The fourth quarter is the second quarter followed immediately the first two-thirds of the third quarter. Thus the entire tune is played twice in an hour, with the cam-drum rotating twice. Professor Robert Carter, a geologist, became internationally famous in the last two decades of his life because he was one of the very few scientists who had the courage publicly to question some of the more extreme claims made by advocates of the apocalyptic theory of global warming. As the reported rate of global warming (even after much ever-upward adjustment of the linear-regression trends on all of the principal global-temperature datasets) continues to be very considerably below the rates that had been predicted, his polite but incisive questioning of what has become a substitute for true religion in the academic world will one day be seen to have been prescient. Bob Carter was personally distressed by the extent to which the academic world had abandoned the scientific method in the rent-seeking pursuit of ever-larger grants from governments panicked or profiting by the climate scare. His university, which makes much money out of global warming by this questionable method, felt threatened by its leading professor's heresy. Shoddily, the vice-chancellor, to his eternal shame and to that of his university, presided over the abandonment of all pretense at academic freedom: the university took various frankly malicious steps to Bob Carter's detriment, the last of which was the withdrawal of his right as an emeritus professor to continue to use the library of the university that he had served so long and so well. He was deeply distressed not so much by his university's mistreatment of him in the closing years of his long and distinguished life as by its totalitarian rejection of the essential and formerly sacrosanct principle of academic freedom to dissent from profitable orthodoxy. Despite the university's petty-minded and self-serving misconduct, he remained cheerfully and determinedly active to the last, attending the UN climate summit in Paris in December 2015. Among all who heard him speak or lecture, he had a reputation for an engaging profundity of learning, incision of thought, clarity of expression and gentleness of manner. His former students remember him fondly standing before them in his trademark shorts and well-worn rock-jock's boots, reading to them the long history of our planet from the geological formations he had so enthusiastically studied. He will also be remembered for his great kindness to his friends, and particularly to those who needed his help, which was always unstintingly given. May the great soul of this great man rest in peace, and long may Bob Carter's Peal ring out in his honor. The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley Category People & Blogs License Standard YouTube License SHOW LESS Al SHOW MORE COMMENTS Add a