Up high in the City and County Building, a man with a fondness for potbellied pigs, poodles and Johann Sebastian Bach toiled Monday to make sure Christmas music tolled on the city’s bells.
Robert Gift has volunteered as the city’s unofficial carillonneur every December since discovering the building’s bells in 1979.
“If I hadn’t discovered them, they’d still be silent today,” Gift said before launching into another Christmas carol over the lunch hour.
He struck a keyboard in a fifth-floor room also housing the equipment that runs the elevator that transports jail inmates to their court hearings.
Every key he hit rang one of the 10 bells that hang in the tower of the building.
Back in 1979, Gift one day looked up at the building’s clock tower and surmised there must be some bells up there.
Sure enough, after persuading the mayor’s office to let him take a look, he found the bells, which had been silent for years. He asked the mayor back then, Bill McNichols, if he could play the bells during lunch every Wednesday.
McNichols thought that might interfere with court business, but told Gift he could play Christmas music in December when the building’s light display was turned on. A tradition was established.
The clock and four of the bells were donated in 1932 by Kate Speer in memory of her husband, former Denver Mayor Robert Speer. In 1950, Kate Speer donated six additional bells.
Every December, Gift plays Christmas tunes on the bells in the evenings and during the noon hour on Christmas Eve. He’ll be playing this evening, too. He hopes somebody will get inspired some day and compose a chime just for Denver.
These days, Gift is accompanied when he chimes away by a pet poodle he picked up two years ago from an animal shelter. Gift’s wife, who is from China, named the poodle Xile, pronounced Sheeler. The word means “smile happy” in Chinese.
Sure enough, Xile seems to like the music and seems to, well, actually smile in peaceful bliss. Adorned in a sweater, the dog napped happily as Gift played Christmas carols on Monday.
Gift once owned a potbellied pig named Piganini. He still gets sad when he talks of how the pig succumbed to cancer and didn’t respond to his mouth-to-mouth resuscitation efforts.
He smiles when he remembers how Piganini chomped away and ate a portion of Gift’s sheet music detailing music suitable for Denver’s bells. Gift had replicated the notes by going to clock shops and listening as clocks struck various chimes. A trained classical organist, Gift recognized the notes and copied them down on paper. He hopes Piganini enjoyed chomping away on his handiwork.
Gift, who works as a chimney sweep in his regular job, said the public’s favorite tune for him to play is “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
Every year, Gift takes a few requests. One year a judge asked him to play a jazz song. A woman used to call each year and ask for tunes, but she has since died. One New Year’s Eve, Gift and 11 others furtively snuck up to the fifth floor and rang in the New Year at midnight with 12 discordant notes. Then they celebrated with a bottle of champagne.
Gift no longer makes his telephone number available for requests because he ends up getting deluged. But you just might be able to figure it out if you follow this hint. The final numbers correspond to the letters spelling the name of a favorite composer: jbach or 52224.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
