Danilov Monastery 2

This guide to Danilov Monastery in Moscow starts in nineteen thirty, when Stalin's men planned to melt down its eighteen historic bells for scrap. It follows Charles Crane, a Chicago businessman who had once heard Russian bells ring over the town of Rostov, buying the entire set and shipping it to Harvard University. The bells lived seventy-eight years as adopted Americans, including the giant nicknamed Mother Earth, rung by an eight-hundred-pound clapper. Listen for the story of the student keeper who could distinguish two hundred forty-three distinct pitches between two ordinary notes.