Bell-ringing

Campanology (/kæmpəˈnɒlədʒi/) is both the scientific and artistic study of bells, encompassing their design, tuning, and the methods by which they are rung. It delves into the technology behind bell casting and tuning, as well as the rich history, traditions, and techniques of bellringing as an art form. This field often involves the study of large, tuned bell collections, such as Flemish carillons, Russian zvons, or English "rings of bells" used for change ringing. These unique assemblages come with distinct practices and challenges, and campanology also explores the composition and performance of music written specifically for them.

While campanology primarily refers to larger bells typically housed in towers, it is not usually applied to smaller bell collections, such as glockenspiels, tubular bells, or Indonesian gamelans. Instead, the term is most commonly associated with the use of large bells, their musical and historical significance, and the ongoing efforts to perfect these instruments.

Etymology and definition

''Campanology'' is a hybrid word. The first half is derived from the Late Latin , meaning 'bell'; the second half is derived from the Ancient Greek () meaning 'the study of'.

A campanologist is one who studies campanology, though it is popularly misused to refer to a bell ringer.

Forms of bellringing

Full circle ringing

In English style (see below) full circle ringing, the bells in a church tower are hung so that on each stroke the bell swings through a complete circle; actually a little more than 360 degrees. Between strokes, it briefly sits poised 'upside-down', with the mouth pointed upwards; pulling on a rope connected to a large diameter wheel attached to the bell swings it down and the assembly's own momentum propels the bell back up again on the other side of the swing. Each alternate pull or stroke is identified as either ''handstroke'' or ''backstroke''—handstroke where the "sally" (the fluffy area covered with wool) is pulled followed by a pull on the plain "tail". At East Bergholt in the English county of Suffolk, there is a unique set of bells that are not in a tower and are rung full circle by hand. They are the heaviest ring of five bells listed in ''Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers''. The heaviest bell is and the bells have a combined weight of .

These rings of bells have relatively few bells, compared with a carillon; six or eight-bell towers are common, with the largest rings numbering up to sixteen bells. The bells are usually tuned to a diatonic scale without chromatic notes; they are traditionally numbered from the top downwards so that the highest bell (called the ''treble'') is numbered 1 and the lowest bell (the ''tenor'') has the highest number; it is usually the tonic note of the bells' scale.

To swing the heavy bells requires a ringer for each bell. Furthermore, the great inertias involved mean that a ringer has only a limited ability to retard or accelerate their bell's cycle. Along with the relatively limited palette of notes available, the upshot is that such rings of bells do not easily lend themselves to ringing melodies.

Instead, a system of ''change ringing'' evolved, particularly in the early seventeenth century, which centres on mathematical permutations. The ringers begin with ''rounds'', which is simply ringing down the scale in numerical order. (On six bells this would be ''123456''.) The ringing then proceeds in a series of ''rows'' or ''changes'', each of which is some permutation of rounds (for example ''214365'') where no bell changes by more than one position from the preceding row (this is also known as the Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm).

In ''call change ringing'', one of the ringers (known as the ''Conductor'') calls out to tell the other ringers how to vary their order. The timing of the calls and changes of pattern accompanying them are made at the discretion of the Conductor and so do not necessarily involve a change of ringing sequence at each successive stroke as is characteristic of ''method ringing''. Some ringers, notably in the West of England where there is a strong call-change tradition, ring call changes exclusively but for others, the essence of change ringing is the substantially different method ringing. As of 2025 there are 7,255 English style rings. Wales having 230, Scotland 25, and the island of Ireland 61. The Channel Islands has 13 and the Isle of Man 2. 7 in Mainland Europe, 60 in North America, 2 in the Caribbean, 13 in Africa. Australia 72 and New Zealand 11. The remaining 6759 (93%) are in England (including several mobile rings).

Veronese bell ringing

Bolognese bell ringing

Change ringing

=Method ringing

=

In ''method'' or ''scientific ringing'' each ringer has memorized a pattern describing his or her bell's course from row to row; taken together, these patterns (along with only occasional ''calls'' made by a conductor) form an algorithm which cycles through the various available permutations dictated by the number of bells available. There are hundreds of these methods which have been composed over the centuries and all have names, some being very fanciful. Better-known examples such as Plain Bob, Reverse Canterbury, Grandsire and Double Oxford are familiar to most ringers.

Serious ringing always starts and ends with rounds; and it must always be ''true''—each row must be unique, never repeated. A performance of a few hundred rows or so is called a ''touch''. A performance of all the possible permutations possible on a set of bells is called an ''extent'', with $n$ bells there are $n$ ! possible permutations. With five bells 5! = 120 which takes about 5 minutes. With seven bells 7! = 5,040 which takes about three hours to ring. This is the definition of a full peal on 7 (5,000 or more for other numbers of bells.) Less demanding is the quarter peal of 1,260 changes. When ringing peals and quarter peals on fewer bells several complete extents are rung consecutively. When ringing on higher numbers of bells less than a complete extent is rung. On eight bells the extent is 8!=40,320 which has only been accomplished once, taking nearly nineteen hours.

Ringing in English belltowers became a popular hobby in the late 17th century, in the Restoration era; the scientific approach which led to modern method ringing can be traced to two books of that era, ''Tintinnalogia or the Art of Ringing'' (published in 1668 by Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman) and ''Campanalogia'' (also by Stedman; first released 1677; see Bibliography). Today change ringing remains most popular in England but is practiced worldwide; over four thousand peals are rung each year.

Dorothy L. Sayers's mystery novel ''The Nine Tailors'' (1934) centres around change ringing of bells in a Fenland church; her father was a clergyman.

Russian Orthodox bellringing

The bells in Russian tradition are sounded by their clappers, attached to ropes; a special system of ropes is developed individually for every belltower. All the ropes are gathered in one place, where the bell-ringer stands. The ropes (usually all ropes) are not pulled, but rather pressed with hands or legs. Since one end of every rope is fixed, and the ropes are kept in tension, a press or even a punch on a rope makes a clapper move.

The Russian Tsar Bell is the largest extant bell in the world.

Carillons

Chimes

Ellacombe apparatus

The Ellacombe apparatus is an English mechanism devised for chiming by striking stationary bells with external hammers. However it does not have the same sound as full circle ringing due to the absence of the doppler effect derived from bell rotation and the lack of a damping effect of the clapper after each strike.

It requires only one person to operate. Each hammer is connected by a rope to a fixed frame in the bell-ringing room. When in use the ropes are taut, and pulling one of the ropes towards the player will strike the hammer against the bell. To enable normal full circle ringing on the same bells, the ropes are slackened to allow the hammers to drop away from the moving bells.

The system was devised in 1821 by Reverend Henry Thomas Ellacombe of Gloucestershire, who first had such a system installed in Bitton in 1822. He created the system to make conventional bell-ringers redundant, so churches did not have to tolerate the behaviour of what he thought were unruly bell-ringers.

However, in reality, it required very rare expertise for one person to ring changes. The sound of a chime was a poor substitute for the rich sound of swinging bells, and the apparatus fell out of fashion. Consequently, the Ellacombe apparatus has been disconnected or removed from many towers in the UK. In towers where the apparatus remains intact, it is generally used like a carillon, but to play simple tunes, or if expertise exists, to play changes.

Bellfounding

Bell tuning

The tuning of a bell is completely dependent on its shape. When first cast it is approximately correct, but it is then machined on a tuning lathe to remove metal until it is in tune. This is a very complex exercise which took centuries of empirical practice, and latterly modern acoustic science, to understand.

If a bell is part of a set to be rung or played together, then the initial dominant perceived sound, called the strike note, must be tuned to a designated note of a common scale. In addition each bell will emit harmonics, or partials, which must also be tuned so that these are not discordant with the bell's strike note. This is what Fuller-Maitland writing in ''Grove's dictionary of music and musicians'' meant when he said : "Good tone means that a bell must be in tune with itself."

The principal partials are;

* hum note: an octave below the strike note,
* strike note
* tierce: minor third above the strike note
* quint: perfect fifth above the strike note
* nominal: octave above the strike note

Further, less dominant, partials include the major, third and perfect fifth in the octave above these.

"Whether a founder tunes the nominal or the strike note makes little difference, however, because the nominal is one of the main partials that determines the tuning of the strike note."Neville Horner Fletcher, Thomas D. Rossing (1998). ''The Physics of Musical Instruments'', p. 685. . Cites Schoofs et al., 1987 for major-third bell. A heavy clapper brings out lower partials (clappers often being about 3% of a bell's mass), while a higher clapper velocity strengthens higher partials (0.4 m/s being moderate). The relative depth of the "bowl" or "cup" part of the bell also determines the number and strength of the partials in order to achieve a desired timbre.

Bells are generally around 80% copper and 20% tin (bell metal), with the tone varying according to material.

Tone and pitch is also affected by the method in which a bell is struck. Asian large bells are often bowl shaped but lack the lip and are often not free-swinging. Also note the special shape of Bianzhong bells, allowing two tones. The scaling or size of most bells to each other may be approximated by the equation for circular cylinders:

''f=Ch/D²''

where ''h'' is thickness, ''D'' is diameter, and ''C'' is a constant determined by the material and the profile.Rossing, Thomas D. (2000). ''Science of Percussion Instruments'', p.139. .

The major third bell

On the theory that pieces in major keys may better be accommodated, after many unsatisfactory attempts, in the 1980s, using computer modeling for assistance in design by scientists at the Technical University in Eindhoven, bells with a major-third profile were created by the Royal Eijsbouts bell foundry in the Netherlands, being described as resembling old Coke bottles in that they have a bulge around the middle; and in 1999 a design without the bulge was announced.

Bell organizations

The following organizations promote the study, music, collection and/or preservation and restoration of bells.Rama, Jean-Pierre (1993). ''Cloches de France et d’ailleurs'', Le Temps Apprivoisé, pp.229–230. Paris, France. . Nation(s) covered are given in parentheses.

* The American Bell Association International (United States with foreign chapters)
* Association Campanaire Wallonne asbl (Belgium)
* Associazione Italiana di Campanologia (Italy)
* Associazione Suonatori di Campane a Sistema Veronese (Italy)
* The Australian and New Zealand Association of Bellringers (Australia, New Zealand)
* Beratungsausschuss für das Deutsche Glockenwesen (Germany)
* British Carillon Society (United Kingdom)
* The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers (UK)
* Gruppo Campanari Padre Stanislao Mattei (Bologna, Italy)
* Handbell Musicians of America (United States, chapter of English Handbell Ringers Association)
* Handbell Ringers of Great Britain (United Kingdom)
* Société Française de Campanologie (France)
* Unione Campanari Bolognesi (Emilia and Romagna, Italy)
* Unione Campanari Modenesi "Alberto Corni" (Modena, Italy)
* Verband Deutscher Glockengießereien e.V. (Germany)
* (multinational)

Famous Campanologists

* Fabian Stedman (1640–1713), had a key role in publishing two books ''Tintinnalogia'' (1668 with Richard Duckworth) and ''Campanalogia'' (1677 – written solely by him) which are the first two publications on the subject
* William Brereton, 2nd Baron Brereton, 1st master of the Ancient Society of College Youths
* Arthur Heywood, founder of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers
* Bilbie family, were bell founders and clockmaker
* Ronald Hammerton Dove, wrote Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers
* William Gillett, founded Gillett & Johnston

See also

* Index of campanology articles

Citations

General and cited references

*
*
* '' Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers to the Ringing Bells of Britain and of the World'' (2000).
* Duckworth, Richard and Stedman, Fabian (1970) 668 ''Tintinnalogia; or, The Art of Ringing'', 1st ed. reprinted. Bath: Kingsmead Reprints. .
* Ingram, Tom (1954). ''Bells of England''. London: F. Muller.
* Stedman, F. (1990) 677 ''Campanalogia: or The Art of Ringing Improved ...'', facsimile of 1st ed. Kettering: C. Groome. .
* Walters, H. B. (1908). ''Church Bells''. London: Mowbray.
* Wilson, Wilfrid G. (1965). ''Change Ringing: The Art and Science of Change Ringing on Church and Hand Bells''. London: Faber.

External links

* General
*
Bell Facts: Tools of Communication—Instruments of Music—Objects of Art
*
Gallery of medieval depictions of bells (''Musiconis database, Université Paris-Sorbonne'')
*
Video of tuning a bell
*
Video explaining bell tuning
* Carillons
*

on the Web site of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA)
* Chimes
*
Chimes and knells rung in traditional music from County of Nice, France
*

* Russian Orthodox bells
**
A collection of MP3 recordings of Russian Orthodox bells
* British bells
*
Discover Bell Ringing
€”An introduction for non-ringers
*
Dove's Guide online
**
Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing
' by Richard Duckworth, Fabian Stedman (1671), from Project Gutenberg
*
Change Ringing Resources by Roger Bailey
*
Central Council of Church Bell Ringers
*
''The Ringing World'' magazine
* Indian Bells
*
''Campanology in India: Bell Ringing, An Aid to Worship''
(in Hinduism) by S. Srikanta Sastri (1935)

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