change ringing

The tradition & historical record

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 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". ¹

Today, some towers have as many as sixteen bells that can be rung together, though six or eight bells are more common. The highest pitch bell is known as the treble, and the lowest is the tenor. In some towers, a bell larger than a tenor that is present would be called a bourdon. The bourdon is not part of the change ringing peal; it is hung from a pivoted beam. For convenience, the bells are referred to by number, with the treble being number 1 and the other bells numbered by their pitch—2, 3, 4, etc.—sequentially down the scale. (This system often seems counter-intuitive to musicians, who are used to a numbering that ascends with pitch.) The bells are usually tuned to a diatonic major scale, with the tenor bell being the tonic (or key) note of the scale. Some towers contain additional bells so that different subsets of the full number can be rung, still to a diatonic scale. For instance, many 12-bell towers have a flat sixth, which if rung instead of the normal number 6 bell allows 2 to 9 to be rung as light diatonic octave; other variations are also possible. ¹

The bells in a tower reside in the bell chamber or belfry usually with louvred windows to enable the sound to escape. 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. ¹

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. Two forms of ringing changes have developed; ¹

Call changes: where the conductor of the ringing commands each change. Method ringing: where after a word of command to start, the changes are rung from memory by the ringers. ¹

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. The technique was probably developed in the early 17th century in the early days of change ringing. 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. ¹

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. Calls are usually of the form "X to (or after) Y" or "X and Y"; in which X and Y refer to two of the bells by their physical numbers in the tower (not by their positions in the row). All cause two bells to swap. The first form is used for calling up and calling down, and the second form swaps the two bells mentioned. As an example of calling up and down, consider the following sequence of rows, and the calls a conductor would use to call them: ¹

Thus it can be seen how these ways of calling differ: ¹

In calling up, The first-called bell moves after the second called bell. In calling down, The first-called bell moves after the second called bell. In Swapping, the bells simply swap position 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. ¹

Method ringing is the continuously changing form of change ringing, and gets its name from the use of a particular method to generate the changes. 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. The method is committed to memory by each ringer, so that only a few commands are given by the ringer in charge (the conductor). Learning the method does not consist of memorising the individual sequences, but using a variety of techniques such as: ¹

Memorising the path of the bell, not the numbers of the bells it strikes after. This can be by visualising a tracking line in a method diagram or by breaking the line into small "work" units which are joined together. and looking for visual signposts, such as when the ringer's bell crosses with another particular bell. There are thousands of different methods, of which two methods on six bells are explained in detail below. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Change ringing”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

change ringing is art of ringing a set of bells in mathematical patterns, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 6 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²