Change ringing Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a series of mathematical patterns called "changes", without attempting to ring a conventional tune. It originated in the British Isles and remains most popular there today, as well as in countries around the world with British influence. On continental Europe, by contrast, a different form of campanology, carillon ringing (which does aim at recognizable melodies), is much more popular. Like carillons, change-ringing bells are often found in church towers; but the two methods are entirely different not only in their musical aims, but also in their physical set-ups. A carillon consists of a large number of bells which are struck by hammers all tied in to a central framework so that one carilloneur can control them all; change ringing, by contrast, uses a smaller number of bells and typically requires a ringer for each bell.
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2 Mathematics of bellringing 3 History and modern status of change-ringing 4 See also 5 External links |
A bell tower in which bellringing takes place can contain up to sixteen bells, but six or eight bells are a more common number for the average church. The bell highest in pitch is known as the treble, and the bell lowest in pitch is called the tenor. For convenience, the bells are numbered with the treble being number 1, and the other bells numbered by their pitch 2,3,4, etc. sequentially down the scale. The bells are usually tuned to a diatonic major scale, with the tenor bell being the tonic (or key) note of the scale.
The bellringers typically stand in a circle around the ringing room, each managing the rope for his or her bell above. The end of the rope is called the tail and by tucking back the tail on itself the rope can be adjusted for ringers of different heights. A little further along, approximately at the ringer's shoulder-level, is a hand-hold called a sally comprising coloured woollen tufting incorporated between the strands of the rope during manufacture. The rope passes through a hole in the ceiling up into the space (the bell-chamber) that contains the bells themselves. Each bell is suspended from a headstock, allowing it to rotate through just over 360 degrees; the headstock is fitted with a wooden wheel around which the rope is wrapped; during a session of ringing the bell sits poised upside-down while it awaits its turn to ring. By pulling the rope, the ringer upsets the balance; the bell swings down then back up again on the other side, describing a 360-degree circle. During the swing, the clapper inside the bell will have struck the soundbow, making the bell resonate exactly once. The ringer can control how quickly the bell sounds again by allowing the bell to pause in the mouth upwards position (thus postponing the sound) or conversely by prematurely ending its swing, tugging the bell back again before it has come to rest at the top of its wheel (thus sounding the bell earlier). If the bells are left in the mouth-upward position between performances, ringing can be resumed at any time; but for safety, at the end of a day's session the bells are usually "rung down" — by gradually dampening their motion, they come to rest for the night at the bottom of their cycle, mouth-down. Before the ringers can perform again on another day, the bells will have to be rung up again — by tugging on the rope, the ringers will set them swinging, gradually adding potential energy by pulling at just the right time, until once again the bell is poised upside-down.
Although ringing certainly involves some physical exertion, the successful ringer is one with practised skill rather than mere brute force; after all, even the smallest bells are typically much heavier than the people ringing them, and can only be rung at all because they are well-blanced in their frames. The heaviest bell hung for full-circle ringing is contained in Liverpool Cathedral and weighs over four tonnes. Despite this collossal weight, it can be safely rung by one (experienced) ringer. (While heavier bells exist (for example Big Ben) they are generally only chimed, either by swinging the bell slightly or using mechanical hammers.)
Change ringing can also be carried out on handbells (small bells, generally weighing only a few hundred grams). These are held in one hand by a handle attached to the crown of the bell and sounded by moving the entire bell, useually by a flick of the wrist. Many groups of tower bell-ringers use handbells to practice (in which case, just as in the tower, one ringer handles one bell). Some bell-ringers have begun to persue handbell ringing as an endeavour in its own right, in which case each ringer often handles two bells.
The simplest way to use a set of bells is ringing rounds, which is sounding the bells repeatedly in sequence: 1, 2, 3, etc.. Musicians will recognise this as a portion of a descending scale. Ringers typically start with rounds and then begin to vary the bells' order, moving on to a series of distinct rows. Each row (or change) is a specific permutation of the bells (for example 123456 or 531246) — that is to say, it includes each bell rung once and only once, the difference from row to row being the order in which the bells follow one another.
The theoretical goal of change-ringing is to ring every possible change in sequence; this is called an "extent" (in the past this was sometimes referred to as a "full peal"). If a tower has n bells, they will have nfactorial possible permutations, a number that becomes quite large as n grows. For example, while six bells have 720 permutations, 8 bells have 40,320; furthermore, 10! = 3,628,800, and 12! = 479,001,600. Estimating two seconds for each change (a brisk pace), we find that that while an extent on 6 bells can be accomplished in half an hour, a full peal on 8 bells should take nearly twenty-two and a half hours (in 1963 ringers in Loughborough accomplished the feat in just under 18 hours), while an extent on 12 bells would take over thirty years! In practice, then, when ringing larger numbers of bells ringers have to settle for only a portion of a complete permutation-series.
Bellringers do not cycle through the various permutations in haphazard order; nor do they typically try to read off each row from a mind-numbingly repetitive list of numbers tacked up in the ringing chamber. Instead, various algorithms or methods have been developed which the bellringers can learn conceptually, so that they can deduce most rows from their predecessors without seeing them all written out; when necessary, a caller or conductor (usually one of the ringers) will call out to let the ringers know when they must make some slight variation to the pattern.
Several key strictures govern the methods. In order to change the bells' order from change to change, an individual ringer (as described above) has to accelerate or retard his or her bell's cycle to move it forward or back from row to row; but there is a limit to the extent to which this is possible. As a rule, then, a given bell can only move up or back a single place in the order from one row to the next. Furthermore, for a performance to be true it is vital that, once a given row has been rung, it never be repeated until every other possible permutation has been heard. Finally, it is usual for a performance both to begin and end with "rounds." Thus a "full extent" of any of the traditional methods has been mathematically proven to begin at rounds, move off through the various permutations visiting every one once and only once, and finally return safely home again to rounds — all with only neighbor-swaps from row to row.
When there are too many bells or not enough time for a full extent, ringers do not usually launch themselves on that effort and then abandon it partway. Rather, they compose shorter performances which, starting, typically, from "rounds," make what may be thought of as a "shorter" loop through the available permutations before arriving back at rounds again, following all the same rules as a full peal would. A bellringer devising such a plan would still follow one of the recognized methods, but would make a few slightly different decisions along the way to get back sooner. Depending on how many 'short-cuts' are taken, the ringers might perform a peal (a name today generally applied to any series of at least 5040 (i.e. 7! changes), a quarter-peal (at least 1260), or simply a short touch (usually a few hundred changes long).
A wide variety of methods have been devised, often called by quaint names — "Kent Treble Bob Major", "Stedman Caters", "Grandsire Triples" or "Bristol Surprise Maximus", for example. The first part of the name often refers to the inventor or a locality where the method was first rung; the remainder of the the name encodes some features of the algorithm itself, particularly the number of bells it is designed for. A method for 4 bells is called a "minimus"; for 6 a "minor"; for 8 a "major"; for 10 a "royal"; and for 12 a "maximus." For an odd number of bells, the terms are "doubles" (5 bells); "triples" (7); "caters" (9"); and so forth. (These customary names, it should be noted, do not necessarily refer to the number of bells being rung, but rather to the number of bells being permuted: it is quite possible to ring (for example) "caters" on ten bells by ringing the tenor in the invariant last place of each row, preceded by permutations of the top nine bells. Indeed, since most bell towers have an even number of bells, the odd-bell systems above are frequently rung this way, with the tenor covering.)
Ringers must thoroughly learn and understand the method they are to use before ringing begins. Various systems have been developed of expressing a given algorithm on paper, such as the rather mathematical place notation. More often a ringer writes out his or her bell's blue line to practice:
The example above shows a partial blue line of the 5th bell for plain hunt on six — the plain hunt, which permutes the bells in a plaiting pattern, being one of the simplest algorithms. (As is often done, the path taken by the 1st bell (the "treble") has here been redlined.) Other more complicated methods permute the bells more elaborately, involving such manoeuvres as dodges, points, fish-tails, and cats-ears.
Change-ringing began in England in the early part of the 17th century. The techniques used today are extremely similar to those developed at that time, with the only major innovations being the use of ball bearings to improve the ease of movement of the bells, and the introduction of Simpson tuning in the early 20th century to improve the intonation of the bells.
The first recorded peal was rung on May 2nd, 1715 at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, England, and was of the method today known as Plain Bob Triples. Today change-ringing can frequently be heard from towers all over that country and around the world, often before or after a church service or wedding. While on these everyday occasions the ringers must usually content themselves with shorter "touches," for special occasions a quarter-peal is often rung; a quarter-peal of triples will last something on the order of 45 minutes. Periodically, for a special occasion (or sometimes just for fun) a group of ringers might attempt a peal (the most concise of which will last approximately three hours); if they succeed they often mark the accomplishment with a peal board on the wall of the ringing chamber.
The longest (in terms of changes) peal ever rung was on handbells in Coventry on 2nd October 2004. It consisted of 50400 changes (10 times the changes in a standard peal) of 70 different "Treble Dodging Minor" methods, and took over 17 hours to ring.
The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers is the representative body for all those who ring bells in the traditional English style around the world, and was founded in 1891. Today the Council represents 66 affiliated societies, which cover all parts of the British Isles as well as centres of ringing in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Verona in Italy.
The ringing community has its own weekly newspaper, the Ringing World, which is also the official journal of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. Published weekly since 1911 it includes articles relating to bellringing and the bellringing community, as well as publishing records of achievements such as peals and quarter-peals.
This is an Article on Change ringing. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Change ringing Mechanics of church bellringing
Handbells
Mathematics of bellringing
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History and modern status of change-ringing
See also
External links