At noon I attended Mr. Potholt, who is not young, and totally blind, to the tower of the Stad-huys or townhouse, of which he is carillonneur; it is a drudgery unworthy of such a genius; he has had this employment, however, many years, having been elected to it at thirteen. He had very much astonished me on the organ, after all that I had heard in the rest of Europe; but in playing those bells, his amazing dexterity raised my wonder -much higher; for he executed with his two hands, passages that would be very difficult to play with the ten fingers; shakes, beats, swift divisions, triplets, and even arpeggios he has contrived to vanquish.
He began with a psalm tune, with which their High Mightinesses are chiefly delighted, and which they require at his hands whenever he performs, which is on Tuesdays and Fridays. He next played variations upon a psalm tune, with great fancy and even taste. When he had performed this task he was so obliging as to play a quarter of an hour extempore in such a manner as he thought would be more agreeable to me than psalmody; and in this he succeeded so well, that I sometimes forgot both the difficulty and defects of the instrument. He never played in less than three parts, marking the bass and the measure constantly with the pedals. I never heard a greater variety of passages in so short a time; he produced effects by the pianos and fortes, and the crescendo and the shake, both as to loudness and velocity, which I did not think possible upon an instrument that seemed to require little other merit than force in the performer.
But surely this was a barbarous invention, and there is a barbarity in the continuance of it. If Mr. Potholt had been put into Dr. Dominicetti's hottest human caldron for an hour, he could not have perspired more violently than he did after a quarter of an hour of this furious exercise; he stripped to his shirt, put on his nightcap, and trussed up his sleeves for this excution; and he said he was forced to go to bed the instant it is over, in order to prevent his catching cold, as well as to recover himself; he being usually so much exhausted as to be utterly unable to speak...

Dr. Charles Burney,1773

Carillon Art in the Low Country
Bells and Their Music
Beaumont Tower Carillon
Wendell Westcott
Michigan State University