Campanology

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Campanology is the study of bells and the methods of casting, tuning and sounding them, of the creation and perfection of musical instruments consisting of one or more racks of bells and the composing for and playing on these.

The origin of the word campanology is from the latin campana meaning bell and logia meaning to study.

Pealing the bell: sounding a bell by pulling a rope that causes the bell to move back and forth to strike the clapper. At a church it is common to peal the bell for most regular worship services.
Tolling the bell: sounding a bell by pulling a rope that is tied to the clapper, causing the clapper to strike the bell. At a church it is common to toll the bell for funerals.

1 Carillons
2 Chimes
3 Russian Orthodox bells
- 3.1 The Great Dormition Bell
4 British bells
- 4.1 Bell-ringing
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Carillons

The carillon is a complex instrument that has been studied and minutely improved for highest musical quality. It draws both tourists and locals to the concerts and recitals. Professional campanologists like Jef Denyn had, and still have world fame.

The instrument is played sitting on a bench by hitting the top keyboard that allows expression through variation of touch, with the underside of the half-clenched fists, and the bottom keyboard with the feet, since the lower notes in particular require more physical strength than an organ, the latter not attaining the tonal range of the better carillons: for some of these, their bell producing the lowest tone, the 'bourdon', may weigh well over 8 tonnes; other fine ones settle for 5 to 6 tonnes. A carillon renders at least two octaves for which it needs 23 bells, though the finest have 47 to 56 bells or extravagantly even more, arranged in chromatic sequence, so tuned as to produce concordant harmony when many bells are sounded together.

The oldest are found in church towers in continental northern Europe, especially in cathedral towers in northern France and Belgium, where some (like the St. Rumbolds Tower in Mechelen, the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp) became UNESCO World Heritage Sites – classified, rather misleadingly, with the Belfry of Bruges and its municipal Carillon under 'Belfries of Belgium and France'.
The carillon of Kirk in the Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, United States, has the highest number of bells in the world: 77.
Modern large carillon edifices have been erected as stand-alone instruments across the world, for instance the Netherlands Carillon at Arlington National Cemetery.

[edit] Chimes

A carillon-like instrument with fewer than 23 bells is called a chime. American chimes usually have one to one and a half diatonic octaves. Many chimes play an automated piece of music. Chime bells generally used to lack dynamic variation and inner tuning, or the mathematical balance of a bell's complex sound, to permit use of harmony. Since the 20th century, in Belgium and The Netherlands, clock chime bells have inner tuning and produce complex fully harmonized music._^[1]

The here described chimes, often singular chime, should neither be confounded with another musical instrument called chimes or tubular bells, nor with a wind chime.

[edit] Russian Orthodox bells

The bells in Russian tradition are rung exclusively by tolling and never by pealing. 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.

[edit] The Great Dormition Bell

The heaviest Russian bell that effectively made its sound, weighed 160 tonnes. It took twenty years before it was installed in a specially constructed tower. For 45 years, with advance notice to the residents against vibrations as of a small earthquake, this Tsar-Bell in honor of the Dormition Cathedral was rung only on special occasions – till in 1701 it cracked by a fall resulting from a fire in the Kremlin.

[edit] British bells

Unlike continental European bells, the British bells are held upside-down and swing almost 360 degrees with each rope pull, stopping in the inverted position. The next pull swings it back till it attains the initial inverted position. Each of the usually 6 or 8 of these "full circle" bells, has its own bell-ringer at the rope. The lightest bell in the ringing chamber is the 'one' (or 'treble'), the next bell to the right is the 'two', and so on till the heaviest ('tenor').

Before the 18th century, English churches used to have only 3 or 4 bells. Of the few with 6 bells in the 17th century, these of the Cathedral and St. Swithun's Church in Worcester, St.Peter's Church at Martley with the oldest set cast as a ring, and monastic churches at Evesham, Malvern and Pershore, still remain; these of about half a dozen other churches are cracked, replaced, or gone._^[2]

[edit] Bell-ringing

Bell ringing of church bells had become a popular hobby in the English Restoration period, in the late 1600s. Richard Duckworth's "Tintinnalogia - or the Art of Ringing" was the first publication on the subject in 1668 by Fabian Stedman (1640–1730); the latter wrote "Campanologia" (1677, improved edition 1702) and is commemorated on a plaque in the St. Andrew Undershaft church porch, Leadenhall Street, London. Further notable are Jasper Snowdon's "Ropesight" (1879) and "Standard Methods in the Art of Change Ringing" (1881)._^[3]^[4]

The most common type is still change ringing, at which the order of the bells' strikes changes sequence after sequence without repeating any previous order. Each of the many different ways this can be done, is known as a "method". A very simple example is that of the plain hunt method, here shown for 5, 4 and 3 bells:

 12345   1234   123    
 21435   2143   213     
 24153   2413   231     
 42513   4231   321    
 45231   4321   312     
 54321   3412   132 
 53412   3142  (123) 
 35142   1342  
 31524  (1234)  
 13254
(12345)

A complete set of sequences or 'peal', for 4 bells needs nearly half a minute for its 4! (4x3x2x1=24) 'changes' of four strikes, for twelve bells the 12! changes of twelve strikes would last half a lifetime. A seven bell peal is not so uncommon and takes about three hours. In the above table, the three bells sample is a peal: 3! (3x2x1=6) changes of 3 strikes, each of the others is just a 'touch' or incomplete set of permutations.

The hobby spread to a few other countries as well, as shown by