KEEP CALM AND CHIME ON
There’s more than three rings at this week’s handbell-playing circus
Like Johnny B. Goode, they play just like they’re a-ringing a bell.
Vancouver is hosting the 17th International Handbell Symposium at the convention centre, which ends with a public concert Saturday.
“It’s an attempt at bringing us together and having cultural interchanges as well as the music,” said Barbara Brocker of Sunriver, Ore., a soloist who is perhaps the foremost bell tree player in the world, according to symposium organizers.
Handbell ringing — the musical variety of playing songs and not just calling folks in for lunch, or wandering through the town square crying “hear ye” — began in churches in England and made its way to the U.S. early in the 1900s.
They are still called English handbells, but they’re mostly made in Pennsylvania now.
“Handbell ringing is the ultimate team sport,” Brocker said.
The ringers, each one responsible for a couple of single notes on a scale, have a lot in common with synchronized swimmers.
“There’s a bell for almost every note on a piano,” said Penticton’s Ellen Ramsay, a co-ordinator at the symposium.
Handbell ringing is the ultimate team sport.
Ringers play everything from Adele and Lady Gaga to Bach and Pachelbel’s Canon, although Christmas carols are probably the genre’s most popular songs (yes, including Carol of the Bells).
There are almost limitless playing techniques: tower swing, shake, pluck, vibrato, mallet and echo, as well as several ways to dampen the bell — even water has been used to distort the sound.
Bells are struck as percussion instruments too, as with the bell tree. Often a piano or reed instrument provides accompaniment.
The handbell’s clapper — the pendulum that strikes the inside — is fixed so it moves back and forth in only one direction, while a spring makes sure it doesn’t rest against the bell.
That makes the way you hold a bell in each hand — or two per hand, or even three — determine the type of sound you make. (Holding two so that one clapper goes up and down and the other side to side allows the playing of separate notes, while holding each at 45-degree angles allows two notes to be played at once.)
It was not a cheap endeavour for the 650 or so ringers who made their way to Vancouver. The entry fee alone was about $1,100.
Which is nothing, really, when you look at what handbells can cost. Malmark, a handbell maker in Plumsteadville, Pa., offers indi- vidual bronze handbells starting at US$365, topping out at US$6,400 for a C2 bass.
If you want to buy the whole kit and caboodle, a two-octave Prelude Package is US$7,515, while at the other end of the scale a 7½-octave Symphonic Package will run you US$91,859.
“That sounds reasonable for the whole set, top to bottom,” said Ramsay, who is also the president of the B.C. Guild of English Handbell Ringers.
Other countries represented at the symposium include Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
There are about 250 ringers in B.C. If you’d like to give it a try, you can go to the website bcgehr.com and contact any of the directors, Ramsay said.
They’d love to hear from you — just give them a ring.