Percival Price
Percival Price was born in Toronto. For 50 years he was a carillonneur, composer, teacher, carillon architect, campanologist, author, professor, lecturer, and historian. He received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto and continued his music studies in Vienna and Zurich. He was the first carillonneur at the first carillon in North America, at the Metropolitan Church in Toronto, in 1922, and the first carillonneur at the Rockefeller Carillon in New York City, in 1926, before becoming the first Dominion Carillonneur of the Peace Tower in Ottawa in 1927. He was the first North American to graduate from the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium, in 1927. He was a charter member and one of the founders of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America in Ottawa in 1936, later serving as its president. He was University Carillonneur at the University of Michigan, from 1939 to 1971. He composed and arranged over a thousand selections for the carillon and wrote extensive articles on the study of bells across the world, culminating in his book, Bells and Man, published by Oxford University Press in 1983. In 1974 he was named Honorary President of the World Carillon Federation.