Campanology(en.wikipedia.org) |
Campanology(en.wikipedia.org) |
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/tintinnabulation
One of the many remarkable things about Elizabeth II’s death was the amount of bell ringing to be heard. It was also a rare opportunity to hear muffled bells being rung — the muffles used as a mark of respect for the nation in mourning.
The upcoming coronation will see many teams around England attempting some record breaking change ringing. I’m assuming Westminster Abbey will go for something enormous. If you’ve not heard of change ringing before, try to imagine pressing each key on your keyboard’s numpad in sequence and (i) doing it for every possible sequence, (ii) instead of pushing all the buttons yourself you do it as a team of twelve, and (iii) instead of pushing a key you have to swing a 500lb cast metal bell hanging thirty feet over your head.
This is called "ropesight" and is the hardest thing to grasp about bellringing. Essentially you need to watch, out of the corner of your eye, every other ringer in the chamber: typically six bells in a village parish church, eight in many town churches, 12 or even more in a cathedral. When you've identified which ones should be sounding before you in the sequence, you need to make sure your bell is swinging a fraction of a second after theirs. To do this you need to watch their movements, listen to the pace of the bells, and have full control of the speed you're swinging the bell.
For an experienced ringer it's second nature. But it's the hardest thing for a beginner to learn.
From speaking to the regulars (who wanted me to keep coming back so I'd be prepared and available to ring for the Coronation), I can tell you that a full peal requires at least 5040 changes (swaps, if you will, so instead of ringing 1-2-3-4 you might ring 1-3-2-4) and take a good 3-4 hours to complete!
From the bells, bells, bells, bells.
There is a lot going into the science of how bells work. There are charts and diagrams and tables and fancy formulas, there are endless simulations, there are standards for measuring resonance, changes in density, impurities and whatever.
However, it's all meaningless. It's technically impossible for the foreseeable future to predict how a bell will sound if struck for the first time. We can with some degree of accuracy predict how likely it is to crack or how quickly it will degrade and we know how to make bells that will sound a certain way based on centuries (if not millenia) of practical experience. But in the same way we know Aspirin helps with headaches but don't have the science or technology to understand why and how the effect could be replicated, "bell science" is mostly informed by practical experience and niche cultural knowledge not the kind of stuff you can actually find in engineering papers.
The book Anathem has a whole slew of stuff on changes and caused me to read up on them, I never realized there was specialist software for this.
Like this (serious question, I'm becoming fascinated with this post):
Firstly, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem uses bells prominently and to great emotional effect in the first movement, which presages a line in the next movement "What passing bells for these who die as cattle?"[1]. Arvo Part then referred to this by using bells beautifully in his "Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten"[2]. In fact bells (and the concept of "Tintinnabulation") form a major part of Part's musical language, most famously "Tabula Rasa"[3] which uses prepared piano to make bell-like sounds as well as employing tintinnabuli in the string parts.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJwaF1Kb_i8&list=PLntD4v5IQm...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp2oxWdRMuk
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSSv_JEZwdo&list=PLZgDvxgjzg...
It has to be one of the most robust meta-feedback loops, because the "vision" for the scene is apparent to everyone in real life.
> A campanologist is one who studies campanology, though it is popularly misused to refer to a bell ringer
I once used the term to describe my sister, who quickly told me she was a bell ringer, and that bell ringers never call themselves campanologists.
Speaking of beer and bell ringers here's what the Rev H. T Ellacombe had to say about them in 1861:
"it was a well-known fact that, as a body, a more drunken set of fellows could not be found."
"I have heard of clergymen who have even refused to accept a living where there was a peal of bells; and of those who have said, upon learning the number of the bells in the tower, 'Then, certain it is, there are as many drunkards in the village.' 'That man is a ringer,' is is quite enough in some places to intimate that he is an idle, sottish character. I know one clergyman curacy who left his curacy in Worcestershire on account of the conduct of the ringers."
Some traditions are worth keeping up ;-)
[EDIT] Oh shit, bring those French Easter-egg-laying bells in as a magical beast and they can have a mount!