Free Change Ringing Software 22
Basilio Jarvis
All practices are held at the Mendenhall Bell Tower and are open to new ringers and visitors. Come for an hour, or for the whole practice. Enter Mendenhall Performing Arts Center at the Berenson Studio across from Sage Hall. Accessing the ringing chamber requires climbing a short ladder.
Change ringing is open to all who wish to ring the bells on campus and share their wonderful sounds on important Smith occasions. The band of ringers at Smith College includes Smith students, faculty, staff and alumnae, as well as members from the Five Colleges and the surrounding area.
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in which the ringers commit to memory the rules for generating each change, or by call changes, where the ringers are instructed how to generate each change by instructions from a conductor. This creates a form of bell music which cannot be discerned as a conventional melody, but is a series of mathematical sequences.
Change ringing originated following the invention of English full-circle tower bell ringing in the early 17th century, when bell ringers found that swinging a bell through a much larger arc than that required for swing-chiming gave control over the time between successive strikes of the clapper. Ordinarily a bell will swing through a small arc only at a set speed governed by its size and shape in the nature of a simple pendulum, but by swinging through a larger arc approaching a full circle, control of the strike interval can be exercised by the ringer. This culminated in the technique of full circle ringing, which enabled ringers to independently change the speeds of their individual bells accurately to combine in ringing different mathematical permutations, known as "changes".
Speed control of a tower bell is exerted by the ringer only when each bell is mouth upwards and moving slowly near the balance point; this constraint and the intricate rope manipulation involved normally requires that each bell have its own ringer. The considerable weights of full-circle tower bells also means they cannot be easily stopped or started and the practical change of interval between successive strikes is limited. This places limitations on the rules for generating easily-rung changes; each bell must strike once in each change, but its position of striking in successive changes can only change by one place.
Change ringing is practised worldwide, but it is by far most common on church bells in English churches, where it first developed. Change ringing is also performed on handbells, where conventionally each ringer holds two bells, and chimed on carillons and chimes of bells, though these are more commonly used to play conventional melodies.
The bells are mounted within a bellframe of steel or wood. Each bell is suspended from a headstock fitted on trunnions (plain or non-friction bearings) mounted to the belfry framework so that the bell assembly can rotate. When stationary in the down position, the centre of mass of the bell and clapper is appreciably below the centreline of the trunnion supports, giving a pendulous effect to the assembly, and this dynamic is controlled by the ringer's rope. The headstock is fitted with a wooden stay, which, in conjunction with a slider, limits maximum rotational movement to a little less than 370 degrees. To the headstock a large wooden wheel is fitted and to which a rope is attached. The rope wraps and unwraps on the rim of the wheel as the bell rotates backwards and forwards. This is full circle ringing and quite different from fixed or limited motion bells, which chime. Within the bell the clapper is constrained to swing in the direction that the bell swings. The clapper is a rigid steel or wrought iron bar with a large ball to strike the bell. The thickest part of the mouth of bell is called the soundbow and it is against this that the ball strikes. Beyond the ball is a flight, which controls the speed of the clapper. In very small bells this can be nearly as long as the rest of the clapper.
Below the bell chamber there may be one or more sound chambers, (one of which is likely to house the clock mechanism if the church has one) and through which the rope passes before it drops into the ringing chamber or room. Typically, the rope's length is such that it falls close to or on to the floor of the ringing chamber. About 5 feet (1.5 m) from the floor, the rope has a woolen grip called the sally (usually around 4 feet (1.2 m) long) while the lower end of the rope is doubled over to form an easily held tail-end.
Bellringers typically stand in a circle around the ringing chamber, each managing one rope. Bells and their attendant ropes are so mounted that the ropes are pulled in a circular sequence, usually clockwise, starting with the lightest (treble) bell and descending to the heaviest (tenor). To ring the bell, the ringer first pulls the sally towards the floor, upsetting the bell's balance and swinging it on its bearings. As the bell swings downwards the rope unwinds from the wheel and the ringer adds enough pull to counteract friction and air resistance. The bell winds the rope back onto the other side of the wheel as it rises and the ringer can slow (or check) the rise of the bell if required.
In English-style ringing the bell is rung up such that the clapper is resting on the lower edge of the bell when the bell is on the stay. During each swing, the clapper travels faster than the bell, eventually striking the soundbow and making the bell sound. The bell speaks roughly when horizontal as it rises, thus projecting the sound outwards. The clapper rebounds very slightly, allowing the bell to ring. At the balance point, the clapper passes over the top and rests against the soundbow.
In change ringing where the order the bells are struck in is constantly altered, it is necessary to time the swing so that this strike occurs with precise positioning within the overall pattern. Precision of striking is important at all times. To ring quickly, the bell must not complete the full 360 degrees before swinging back in the opposite direction; while ringing slowly, the ringer waits with the bell held at the balance, before allowing it to swing back. To achieve this, the ringer must work with the bell's momentum, applying just the right amount of effort during the pull that the bell swings as far as required and no further. This allows two adjacent bells to reverse positions, the quicker bell passing the slower bell to establish a new pattern. Although ringing up certainly involves some physical exertion, actual ringing should rely more on practised skill than mere brute force. Even the smallest bell in a tower is much heavier than the person ringing it. The heaviest bell hung for full-circle ringing is in Liverpool Cathedral and weighs 82 long cwt 0 qr 11 lb (9,195 lb or 4,171 kg).[4][5] Despite this colossal weight, it can be safely rung by one (experienced) ringer.
The simplest way to sound a ring of bells is by ringing rounds. This is a repeated sequence of bells descending from the highest to lowest note, which is from the lightest to the heaviest bell. This was the original sequence used before change ringing was developed, and change ringing always starts and ends with this sequence.
Most ringers begin their ringing career with call change ringing; they can thus concentrate on learning the physical skills needed to handle their bells without needing to worry about "methods". There are also many towers where experienced ringers practise call change ringing as an art in its own right (and even exclusively), particularly in the English county of Devon.
Call change ringing requires one ringer to give commands to change the order of the bells, as distinct from method ringing, where the ringers memorise the course of bells as part of a continuous pattern.[7]
In call change ringing each different sequence of the bells, known as a "row", is specifically called out by one ringer, the "conductor", who instructs the other ringers how to change their bells' places from row to row. This command is known as a "call".
The change is made at the next "handstroke" (when the sally on the bell rope is pulled), after the call. In calling, the conductor usually has a strategy or plan to achieve the desired progression of rows, rather than remembering each call, and an example of these is shown in the example on eight bells. Conductors can space out the calls at will, but each row is normally struck twice at least because of the difficulty of calling continuous changes.
In all cases, the ringer of the bell immediately above (behind) the swapping pair must also be alert, as that bell follows a new bell after the swap. Rarer forms of change calling may name just one of the moving bells, call the moving bell by position rather than number, or call out the full change.
The example on the right shows called changes eight bells being called using the "down" system. The sequence of calls shown gives three well-known musical rows, which are Whittingtons, Queens, and Tittums.
After starting in repetitive rounds, at a given command, the ringers vary the bells' order, to produce a series of distinct sequences known as rows or changes. In this way permutation of the bells' striking order proceeds. For example 123456 can become 214365 in the next sequence.
In method ringing, plain hunt is the simplest form of generating changing permutations in a continuous fashion, and is a fundamental building-block of many change ringing methods. The accompanying diagram shows plain hunt on six bells. The course of two bells only are shown for clarity. Each row in the diagram shows the order of striking after each change.
Plain hunt consists of a plain undeviating course of a bell between the first and last places in the striking order, by moving a place in the sequence at each change, but with two strikes in the first and last position to enable a turn-around as the internal bells change over.
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