Campanology () is the
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
and
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
al study of
bell
A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inter ...
s. It encompasses the technology of bells – how they are
founded,
tuned and rung – as well as the history, methods, and traditions of bellringing as an art.
It is common to collect together a set of tuned bells and treat the whole as one
musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
. Such collectionssuch as a Flemish
carillon
A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 cast-bronze bells. The bells are hung in fixed suspension and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniou ...
, a Russian ''zvon'', or an English "
ring of bells
A "ring of bells" is the name bell ringers give to a set of bell (instrument), bells hung for English full circle ringing. The term "peal of bells" is often used, though peal also refers to a change ringing performance of more than about 5,000 ...
" used for
change ringing
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 memor ...
have their own practices and challenges; and campanology is likewise the study of perfecting such instruments and composing and performing music for them.
In this sense, however, the word ''campanology'' is most often used in reference to relatively large bells, often hung in a tower. It is not usually applied to assemblages of smaller bells, such as a
glockenspiel
The glockenspiel ( or , : bells and : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.
The glo ...
, a collection of
tubular bell
Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within a ...
s, or an Indonesian
gamelan
Gamelan () ( jv, ꦒꦩꦼꦭꦤ꧀, su, ᮌᮙᮨᮜᮔ᮪, ban, ᬕᬫᭂᬮᬦ᭄) is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. T ...
.
Etymology and definition
''Campanology'' is a
hybrid word
A hybrid word or hybridism is a word that etymologically derives from at least two languages.
Common hybrids
The most common form of hybrid word in English combines Latin and Greek parts. Since many prefixes and suffixes in English are of Latin ...
. The first half is derived from the
Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...
, meaning 'bell'; the second half is derived from the
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
() meaning 'the study of'.
A campanologist is one who studies campanology, though it is popularly misused to refer to a
bell ringer
A bell-ringer is a person who rings a bell, usually a church bell, by means of a rope or other mechanism.
Despite some automation of bells for random swinging, there are still many active bell-ringers in the world, particularly those with an adv ...
.
Forms of bellringing
Full circle ringing
![St Bees bells in up position](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/St_Bees_bells_in_up_position.jpg)
In English style (see below)
full circle ringing
Full circle ringing is a technique of ringing a tower bell such that it swings in a complete circle from mouth upwards to mouth upwards and then back again repetitively.
Technique
Full-circle tower bell ringing in England developed in the ea ...
, 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
East Bergholt is a village in the Babergh District of Suffolk, England, just north of the Essex border.
The nearest town and railway station is Manningtree, Essex. East Bergholt is north of Colchester and south of Ipswich. Schools include Eas ...
in the English county of
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
, 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
''Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers'' (known to ringers as ''Dove's Guide'' or simply ''Dove'') is the standard reference to the rings of bells hung for English-style full circle ringing. The vast majority of these "towers" are in England an ...
with a tenor of and 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 in numbering up to sixteen bells. The bells are usually tuned to fall in a
diatonic scale
In music theory, a diatonic scale is any heptatonic scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps, ...
without
chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, ...
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
inertia
Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law ...
s involved mean that a ringer has only a limited ability to retard or accelerate his/her 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
A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...
.
![Plain-bob-minor 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Plain-bob-minor_2.png)
Instead, a system of ''change ringing'' evolved, probably early in the seventeenth century, which centres on
mathematical
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
permutations
In mathematics, a permutation of a set is, loosely speaking, an arrangement of its members into a sequence or linear order, or if the set is already ordered, a rearrangement of its elements. The word "permutation" also refers to the act or proc ...
. 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
The Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm or Johnson–Trotter algorithm, also called plain changes, is an algorithm named after Hugo Steinhaus, Selmer M. Johnson and Hale F. Trotter that generates all of the permutations of n elements. E ...
).
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 2015 there are 7,140 English style rings. The Netherlands, Pakistan, India, and Spain have one each. The Windward Isles and the Isle of Man have 2 each. Canada and New Zealand 8 each. The Channel Isles 10. Africa as a continent has 13. Scotland 24, Ireland 37, USA 48, Australia 59 and Wales 227. The remaining 6,798 (95.2%) are in England (including three 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
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...
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
bells there are
! 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
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
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
Fabian Stedman (1640–1713) was an English author and a leading figure in the early history of campanology, particularly in the field of method ringing. He had a key role in publishing two books ''Tintinnalogia'' (1668 with Richard Duckworth) and ...
) and ''Campanalogia'' (also by Stedman; first released 1677; see
Bibliography
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
). Today change ringing remains most popular in England but is practiced worldwide; over four thousand peals are rung each year.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
's mystery story, ''
The Nine Tailors
''The Nine Tailors'' is a 1934 mystery novel by the British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The story is set in the Lincolnshire Fens, and revolves around a group of bell-ringers at the local parish church. The b ...
'' (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
The Tsar Bell (russian: Царь–колокол; ), also known as the Tsarsky Kolokol, Tsar Kolokol III, or Royal Bell, is a , bell on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. The bell was commissioned by Empress Anna Ivanovna, niece of ...
is the largest extant bell in the world.
Carillons
Chimes
Ellacombe apparatus
![Ellacombe apparatus for 6 bells](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Ellacombe_apparatus_for_6_bells.jpg)
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
Full circle ringing is a technique of ringing a tower bell such that it swings in a complete circle from mouth upwards to mouth upwards and then back again repetitively.
Technique
Full-circle tower bell ringing in England developed in the ea ...
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
Henry Thomas Ellacombe or Ellicombe (1790-1885), was an English divine and antiquary. He was the inventor of an apparatus to allow a single ringer to ring multiple bells.
Life
Ellacombe was born in 1790, the son of the Rev. William Ellicombe, re ...
of Gloucestershire, who first had such a system installed in
Bitton
Bitton is a village and civil parish of South Gloucestershire in England, to the east of the Greater Bristol area on the River Boyd.
It is in South Gloucestershire. The parish of Bitton has a population of 9,307, and apart from the village ...
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
A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 cast-bronze bells. The bells are hung in fixed suspension and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniou ...
, but to play simple tunes, or if expertise exists, to play changes.
Bellfounding
Bell tuning
![Erfurt Bell](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Erfurt_Bell.png)
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
Bell metal or bell bronze is an alloy used for making bells and related instruments, such as cymbals. It is a form of bronze with a higher tin content, usually in approximately a 4:1 ratio of copper to tin (typically, 78% copper, 22% tin by mas ...
), 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
Bianzhong (Chinese:编钟) is an ancient Chinese musical instrument consisting of a set of bronze bells, played melodically. China is the earliest country to manufacture and use musical chimes. They are also called Chime Bells. These sets of ch ...
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/D
2'',
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
Royal Eijsbouts ( nl, Koninklijke Eijsbouts) is a bell foundry located in Asten, Netherlands.
The workshop was founded in 1872 by Bonaventura Eijsbouts as a "factory for tower clocks." In 1893 Eijsbouts was joined by his 15-year-old son, Johan ...
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 parenthesis.
*The
American Bell Association International The American Bell Association International, Inc. (ABA) is a nonprofit organization devoted to the collection, preservation, restoration, and research of bells in which members can attend regional chapter events and an annual national convention.Spr ...
(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
The Australian and New Zealand Association of Bellringers, known as ANZAB, is the organisation responsible for the promotion of English-style "full circle ringing" – namely change ringing and method ringing in bell towers with a peal of bells ...
(Australia, New Zealand)
*Beratungsausschuss für das Deutsche Glockenwesen (Germany)
*British Carillon Society (United Kingdom)
*The
Central Council of Church Bell Ringers
The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers (CCCBR) is an organisation founded in 1891 which represents ringers of church bells in the English style.
It acts as a co-ordinating body for education, publicity and codifying change ringing rules, al ...
(UK)
*Handbell Musicians of America (United States, chapter of English Handbell Ringers Association)
*Handbell Ringers of Great Britain (United Kingdom)
*Société Française de Campanologie (France)
*Verband Deutscher Glockengießereien e.V. (Germany)
* (multinational)
See also
*
Index of campanology articles
Campanology is the scientific and musical study of bells. It encompasses the technology of bellshow they are cast
Cast may refer to:
Music
* Cast (band), an English alternative rock band
* Cast (Mexican band), a progressive Mexican rock band
* ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*''
Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers
''Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers'' (known to ringers as ''Dove's Guide'' or simply ''Dove'') is the standard reference to the rings of bells hung for English-style full circle ringing. The vast majority of these "towers" are in England an ...
'' (''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
__NOTOC__
Year 668 ( DCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 668 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar er ...
''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
__NOTOC__
Year 677 ( DCLXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 677 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar e ...
''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 ArtGallery 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
The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA) is a professional association of carillonneurs in North America, dedicated to the advancement of the art, literature, and science of the carillon. It was founded in Ottawa, Canada, in 1936 by A ...
(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 onlineTintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringingby Richard Duckworth, Fabian Stedman (1671), from
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...
Change Ringing Resources by Roger BaileyCentral 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
Sondekoppa Srikanta Sastri (5 November 1904 – 10 May 1974) was an Indian historian, Indologist, and polyglot. He authored around 12 books, over two hundred articles, several monographs and book reviews over four decades in English, Kannada, ...
(1935)
{{Bells
Articles containing video clips
Music theory
Musicology