One of the first things cadets noticed when they arrived for the year was the sound.
On Wednesday afternoons, while footsteps and formations echoed across Summerall Field, melodies drifted from the bell tower above Summerall Chapel. What many people didn’t realize was that the music was not always automated. Sometimes, it was coming from Cadet Paul Cozart, ’27.
A longtime musician who began playing piano at age 4, Cozart discovered the chapel carillon during his knob year after being invited to tour the tower through a chapel music program.
“I didn’t really know the bells were a thing,” he said.
Today, Cozart serves as one of the campus carillonneurs, practicing regularly with Summerall Chapel Organist and Carillonneur Michael Varnadore and performing during special weekends and campus events.
Although both involve keyboards, Cozart said playing the carillon is very different from playing the piano.
“When you play a key on the piano, the hammer strikes the string and then stops the note,” he explained. “That doesn’t happen with bells. You hit the tab that sounds a bell, and it rings for as long as it wants to.”
Success depends less on force than precision and control.
“People also assume all the songs they hear are just a computerized program,” Cozart said. “The reaction I get when I tell people I play the bells is, ‘People play those?’”
An intelligence and security studies major with a minor in Chinese, Cozart hopes to pursue a career in the intelligence community after graduation. But for now, he enjoys the unique perspective the bell tower provides.
High above campus, with Charleston’s church steeples visible in the distance, he has found a place to practice his craft and a way to contribute something memorable to campus life at The Citadel.