Brother, can you spare a chime?

Beginning Tuesday, June 9, the Cornell University campus, which has been serenaded daily by the Cornell chimes with few interruptions since the university opened, will fall silent for the better part of a year. The entire set of bells will be removed from the belfry of McGraw Tower and sent off to Ohio for tuning as part of the tower's refurbishing.

The original nine bells of the chimes were played on the university's first day of operation in 1868, and they were the first to ring out over an American university campus. The current 19 bells have been played daily by student and alumni chimesmasters, whose repertoire includes more than 2,000 songs.

A final chimes concert for the year will be played Monday, June 8, from noon to 1 p.m., and visitors are invited to join the Cornell staff on the Arts Quad to enjoy the music and an ice cream social.

Robert Feldman, faculty adviser to the Cornell chimesmasters, and James Bucko, the Cornell project manager for the tower restoration project, will be hoisted to the belfry in a crane basket to remove the first of the bells June 9. During the rest of the week, all of the bells will be removed and shipped to Batavia, Ohio, where the firm of Meeks and Watson will tune them as a group, while replacing one and adding two more to the ensemble. Thus 21 bells will be back on campus in time for 1999's Commencement activities in May, and they will be returned to the tower next summer in a new configuration designed to enhance their volume and clarity.

The 173-foot McGraw Tower -- erected in 1891 to house the original chimes -- has suffered from the effects of 107 years of wind and rain, and it is undergoing a restoration project. Several of the carved columns and capitals from the tower's observation deck must be replaced. Stone for the job is being quarried from the same area in Ohio that supplied the original stone. Masonry is being cut back and refilled, using a formula similar to the original.

And what will the student chimesmasters do with no chimes to ring? They'll stay in shape on a practice stand, rearrange the 2,400 pieces of chimes music to fit the new bells and hit the road a time or three to visit other chimes at campuses and churches across the Northeast.