Wisdom From Early Leaders
Since you have expressed an interest in some of my work with handbells, I will unfold a narrative for you, in installments, for which you may plead ENOUGH at anytime. I feel that the integration of the whole organizational plan will reveal much more about some of the various parts—bass racks,
damping, etc.I have made every mistake in the "book" with regard to organizng a handbell choir; I believe I may have even invented a few that never made the "book"! In 1953 when my first set of 20 Whitechapel bells arrived (C5 - G6), I assembled 20 young boys to help with the unpacking. While I was excited, I noticed that they seemed less so. Good reason: I had no real plan of what to do, what to play, etc. Only that each boy would have one bell. Of course, I knew that each boy had two hands, but I had no music/scientific idea of the best way to distribute the bells.
I began with an "all American" premise: that each player should participate (have rings), as much as possible, equally. Obviously it couldn't be equal, but we could approach equality by planned distribution based upon the activity of the bells assigned. While I had certain "keyboard instincts"
built in, I could see that an individual ringer would benefit more from "percussionist instincts" than from my kind. I reasoned that, while we would want to create a melodic flowing line, it would not be necessary to have the bells layed out either diatonically or chromatically among the ringers.If I had, say, six ringers, any ringer could ring any pair of bells, and an occasional third, and by shuffling the bells, I could (after I had counted the number of rings on each bell) assign the first most active six bells one each to the ringers. I could then take the next most active six bells and proceed to "even out" the number of rings each player would have; the ringer with the most active of the first six bells would get the least active bell among the second six bells, etc., etc. Further equalizing could be accomplished by judicious assigning of any occasional third bell, etc.
This system(?) actually works!!! It is cumbersome in requiring major shuffling of bells between pieces, though. In the middle 1950s I got up to three octaves: G3 - G6. (I have always felt this to be a better-balanced range than C4 - C7.)
However, by 1960 I had five octaves: C3 - C8. By this time it had also become apparent to me that one can subdivide any set of any range into sub ranges of: bass, tenor, treble. My bass range was C3 - G#4; tenor range was A4 - A#5; treble range was B5 - C8. Four players were assigned to each playing range; bells WITHIN each playing range were assigned to the four players as described above.
The thing that distinguishes each playing range is BOTH the amount of bell activity (how many rings upon each) and the KIND of activity: bass skips around searching for roots and 1st inversions of chords; treble is more scalewise for melody and includes some harmony notes; tenor range is, for the most part, "harmonic fill." Looking at the ranges from a polyphonic point of view, the greatest activity is in the tenor range: hence these four players have the narrowest range of bells—just over an octave (15 bells). The bass range, however, covers an octave and a 6th (21 bells). The treble range covers just over two octaves (26 bells). The less active ranges are given more bells—thus helping to equalize the activity among the players. This, too, works!!!
In 1973 at Tempe, Arizona I saw the Thurlstone Bell Orchestra lead by Alec Dyson. The summer I worked in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Mr. Albert Hughes had mentioned some of the bell choirs "up north" which rang upon "long sets" numbering upwards toward 200 bells! I asked him what they did with so many bells, and he could only describe that they layed them out upon a table, gathered round, and played upon them (Albert was not a musician (self evaluation) and he could describe no more.)
The TBO fascinated me: both for ringing "off-the-table" and for utilizing some 126 bells. One of the features of that concert was that Alec could finish a piece, turn to receive the applause, and immediately turn back and give a downbeat for the next piece! They mesmerized the entire AGEHR
gathering, having played a complete concert one night, we INSISTED that they play a second one the next morning—which they did!I asked what questions I could then and also made plans to go visit them in England the next summer to study first-hand what they did and how they did it. I knew I wanted to get into the use of a long set. I was also sufficiently impressed with off-the-table that I wished I might have known about that years earlier. However, I figured that my ringers were so deeply settled with off-the-shoulder that they would never change. Besides, we would be pulling against the current of accepted ways of doing things within AGEHR.
However, the next fall my ringers began to take care of changing to off-the-table. Individuals began part time experimenting with it; in a little over a year's time they had converted themselves. I had a donor waiting to give more handbells, but I didn't know what I wanted for duplicates. Part of my mission in going to study with TBO was to sort this all out. In this respect, the visit was almost a disappointment. THEY THEMSELVES DID NOT KNOW HOW IT WORKED!
I made charts of which ringer had what bells in front of him, but there was no discernable pattern. I did find, upon comparing notes with Dyson, that THEY were organized into three playing ranges: bass, tenor, treble. (I had been preaching this concept over here for years, and no one seemed to see the importance of it.) I thought: the TRUE TEST will be to determine at which bells he breaks into the next range. If his breakdowns were the same as mine, I felt that there must be some "theological" truth to the concept.
Would you believe his were the same as mine at bass to tenor and a couple of notes different at tenor to treble???
However, his collection of bells in front of each ringer still did not speak to me. Until, upon my observation that his treble ringers had duplicate bells down almost half way into his tenor range, and my question as to WHO would first reach for, say, A5: tenor ringer or treble ringer? The answer I was given was: if it is a melody note, treble plays it; if it is an accompaniment note, tenor plays it.
This info put me on the track of our DIFFERENCES. While I do not know whether Dyson ever figured it out (after all, he was doing it—I was trying to learn how to do it), I decided that he "thought" homophonically, and I "thought" polyphonically. Then going back over his arrangements and recordings I began to see a preference for homophonic playing such as marches and waltzes. Thus one has a (treble) melody, sometimes in octaves, and bass, (tenor) chord, chord (3/4 time) accompaniment.
As a polyphonist, I have always thought of a continuous melodic line (polyphony: several of them!)—though I am perfectly capable of playing homophonic music. With this breakthrough of understanding, I could better appreciate Dyson's setup and still preserve my own integrity by DESIGNING my own long set—which I did.
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Revised: March 30, 2001.