A little bit of information on the art of bell ringing(Bear in mind, I am far from an expert on this as I've only been doing it for a couple of months).
This is based on the "English" style of bell ringing which is fairly unique in the world.
Firstly, you might think bell ringing is a religious thing, but it really isn't.
At least 3 of our band are atheists. In fact it has been suggested that one of the attractions of bell ringing was for less religiously minded people in the past when attending church was "the done thing" aws it gave a way for these people to avoid having to attend church services.
Bell ringing has strong relationship with the church, but that relationship tends to be functional/utilitarian rather than spiritual.
If there were bell towers attached to, say, libraries, or coffee shops, bell ringers would ring there.
It is believed the English style of bell ringing evolved in the 16th and 17th centuries, with some suggesting the art was developed largely at Universities, such as Cambridge, where bored students (they didn't have the Internet in those days) would challenge each other to do more and more daring and reckless things.
From that English bell ringing evolved which a lot of people consider to almost be a sport.
The English style ringing is different from most other bellringing in which the bell is either rocked or struck with a hammer. In English bell ringing, the bell is strapped to a wheel and rotated so that it is completed inverted in each direction. This is done by coordinated pulling on a rope hung below the bell, as can be seen in my video.
This style of ringing facilities far greater control of the bell than simply swinging it back and forth , and facilitates a practice known as "change ringing", which is a competitive art based on memory, team coordination, and mathematical patterns.
it is also very dangerous, so it is vitally important that new ringers are carefully instructed in safe bell handling and supervised until they are competent.
Consider that, at the end of your rope, you have a chunk of swinging metal weighing 1/4 tonne (for the smallest bells) upwards. The weight of the bell can pull the rope upward at up to 90km/hr. If you get yourself caught in it or don't let go at the right time, you will be dragged up with the rope and nothing is going to stop that.
Serious injuries can, and do, occur:
As an example:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bellringer-injured-abingdon-oxfordshire-church-st-helens-steven-tomsett-a8621381.htmlSo, what about the bells themselves. Can we play tunes on them? Well, bells are most commonly tuned in the major scale, so would think so.
Unfortunately, the weight and swinging action of the bells means that only limited control is available, but that's part of the challenge that bell ringers love. Rather than ringing tunes, bell ringers ring patterns.
The simplest pattern is a "round" where all the bells are rung in order, starting at the highest pitched, "the treble". This is what I've been learning for the last few practice sessions. Just controlling your bell enough so that you can ring it at the right time is very challenging. one of the main techniques is to ring the bell up to the balance point (with the mouth of the bell pointing straight up) and that allows you to hold the bell for a few moments until the right time. If you watch the video, I am doing this following the lady to my right.
Once you have perfected this, you can go onto "change ringing", where you start with a simple round, and then pairs of bells swap places with each other in the pattern. The aim with change ringing is to ring continuous patterns with different bells changing position with each other, so that you never repeat any pattern.
Most people have heard of a "peal" of bells, but probably don't know what it is. It's actually a continuous sequence of over 5,040 unique patterns. It takes around 3 hours to ring a full peal, and it is usually done from memory!
More common are quarter-peals which are, as you would expect, 1/4 of the length of time, and "only" take around 45 minutes to ring.
So that's a brief overview of the art of English bell ringing.
Oh and, one final question a lot of people ask: why is it called "English" bellringing?
It's because something like 90% of the bell towers in the world with bells hung in this way are in England. Even with many ancient bell towers falling into disuse or disrepair, or simply being deemed too dangerous to use, there are well over 5,000 working bell towers in England. There are 227 in Wales and only 23 in Scotland.
There are more working bell towers in my local county (80) than there are in the whole of the USA (48). This is largely because of its roots in English universities and their local Anglican churches.
Cheers,
Keith
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