I buried the lede in my last item. The New Yorker relates with aplomb the Harvard-bells-go-back-to-Russia tale, but the highlight of the piece is this character Konstantin Saradzhev, for whom church bells were the music of the spheres -- and an unending source of artistic torment. Saradzhev was born in 1900, the son of a noted Russian conductor and violinist of the same name. At age seven, "the sound of a particularly powerful church bell caused him to lose consciousness, and he was captivated for life," reports the New Yorker writer, Elif Batuman. Saradzhev was an able pianist, but he ridiculed that instrument as "the well-tempered nitwit," because of what he considered its limited tonal colors. As Saradzhev perceived 1,701 tones in an octave, and a piano can create a dozen, it's no wonder he was frustrated: Only bells, with their complex harmonic overtones could satisfy him. He conjured "bell symphonies" in his mind, but was stymied by questions of notation -- how to write down, and therefore remember, what he heard in his head? No notebook was big enough -- and also by church rules dictating how bells could be rung. Church stewards forbade him to tap, beat, and generally fiddle with their bells in the myriad ways he wanted. Despite such strictures, when Saradzhev was granted access to a bell tower, crowds would invariably gather. Though no recordings exist, the results were said to be awesome. Saradzhev came to Harvard in the early 1930s to help install the so-called Danilov bells in Lowell House -- bells rescued from the Danilov Monastery after Stalin banned bell-ringing in churches, which remained at Harvard until last summer. Saradzhev thought that he'd find patrons, and an audience, in America for his bell symphonies, but, alas, it wasn't to be. Harvard's president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, once walked in on Saradzhev as he was filing down the side of one of the Danilov bells, to alter its sound -- searching for some microtonal subtlety, no doubt. Appalled, Lowell told him to stop. At Harvard, Saradzhev steadily declined into paranoia, once drinking ink to counteract poison that he thought was being slipped into his food. Lowell sent him packing back to Moscow. Little is known of his final years, though Batuman says he probably died in an insane asylum, in 1942.