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BELLS CHIMING | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
For over 1,200 years, | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
church bells have called the faithful to worship, | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
helped us to celebrate triumph and tragedy. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
But the fact that they're one of the largest | 0:00:16 | 0:00:19 | |
and loudest musical instruments in the world | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
is often overlooked. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:24 | |
This is something musical innovator Charles Hazlewood | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
wants to change. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
There's something about the sound of bells. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:31 | |
Even as a very small child | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
hearing them from our village church, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
you get this amazing unearthly, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:37 | |
ghostly, sort of ethereal, sound. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
The sense of the music | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
kind of coming almost as if it were out of the earth. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
If I'm honest with you, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
I'm really sad about the fact that there's only one | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
grand piece of symphonic music I can think of | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
that really exploits the potential | 0:00:52 | 0:00:54 | |
of towers near and far in a performance | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
and that's the 1812 Overture. | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
I mean, the reasons why you don't find | 0:00:59 | 0:01:01 | |
more church or tower bell pealing in orchestral music is pretty obvious. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
You can't exactly take an orchestra to a tower | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
and you can't bring the tower into the concert hall. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
But they're such a powerfully evocative part | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
of Englishness, the English landscape, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
and they're great carriers of drama. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
What I want to see is if we can go right back | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
to ground zero, as it were, | 0:01:21 | 0:01:22 | |
with these amazing ancient instruments | 0:01:22 | 0:01:25 | |
and really make some fabulous music. | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
With a track record of | 0:01:32 | 0:01:34 | |
innovative and exciting performances, | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
Charles wants to see if church bells can be used to make original music in their own right. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
I'd love to hear what would happen if you had a three-note chord. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:46 | |
These things have never been done, Charles. You're pushing barriers! | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
Charles is going to immerse himself | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
in the world of bells and bell-ringing. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:54 | |
FURIOUS CACOPHONY | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
Blimey! | 0:01:58 | 0:01:59 | |
He will discover what can and can't be achieved | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
with these neglected musical instruments. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
It's like Heath Robinson comes from the bell tower, isn't it? | 0:02:05 | 0:02:09 | |
At the end of it all, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:11 | |
Charles hopes to bring different worlds together | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
in a unique piece of music | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
the like of which has never been heard before. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
Conductor Charles Hazlewood | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
has given himself the challenge of devising and mounting | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
a piece of music just for bells. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
And as the stage for his unique musical adventure, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
he has chosen the Market Square | 0:02:50 | 0:02:52 | |
in the centre of Cambridge. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:54 | |
When I came up with this scheme, I was very clear about | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
the thing we needed, a central space like this | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
and close by, | 0:03:04 | 0:03:06 | |
working bell towers. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:07 | |
That may sound like an easy thing to deliver. It's not at all. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:11 | |
In fact in the UK, at least 50% | 0:03:11 | 0:03:13 | |
of all churches that have got towers, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
don't have bells, either that work or maybe have been removed. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
I've searched the country, ending up in Cambridge, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
because here in this wonderful square, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
we've three working bell towers. Fantastic! | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
Over there is Great St Mary. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
Just round the corner there you've got St Edward's | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
and then just over there, St Andrew the Great. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:33 | |
All three towers in magnificent working condition. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:37 | |
Great St Mary's, overlooking the Market Square, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
has dominated bell-ringing in Cambridge for over 300 years. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:46 | |
Here in the Middle Ages, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:48 | |
the university bell-ringer would ring the start | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
and end of meals, lectures and prayers. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
And it was here the Westminster Chimes were invented, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
the tunes Big Ben strikes every quarter-hour. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
-Hello. -Hello. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
-I'm Charles. -Nice to meet you. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:04 | |
-Hi, David. -Good to meet you. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:06 | |
David Pipe is the ringing master here at Great St Mary's | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
and George Unsworth is the ringing secretary. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
They have offered to help Charles in his musical adventure. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
I love the sound in between the strikes | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
-when the bell is on the move. -Yeah, yeah. -Beautiful! | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
Absolutely, yeah. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:25 | |
Their first task is to help Charles understand the basics | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 | |
of how bell-ringing actually works. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
A bell has two strokes to it. We have a hand stroke, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
where you are holding onto | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
the furry bit called the sally, and the back stroke. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
The most important thing is that | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
what happens to this after you've pulled it. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
It goes through the ceiling, through that rather small hole there. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:49 | |
If you're still holding it while it goes through that hole... | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
Let's face it, we've all seen those cartoons! | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
This is it. This is for real. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:58 | |
BELL PEALS ONCE | 0:04:59 | 0:05:00 | |
No. It's not coming yet. Put your arms down. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
-Right, you ready now? -Hungry for it! | 0:05:04 | 0:05:05 | |
Here it comes. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
And pull...that's it. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:10 | |
The bells here weigh up to a tonne | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
and swing with huge momentum. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
There we go. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:18 | |
Charles must pull with just enough force to ease the bell | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
off its upright position and propel it around a full circle. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:26 | |
-You could feel it, then? -Right on the calfs! | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
You pulled quite hard, then. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
The other factor is timing. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:32 | |
The ringer should pull just as the bell reaches the top of its swing. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
Pull too soon or too late and he risks losing control. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:40 | |
Oh. Let go. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
Yoh! | 0:05:46 | 0:05:47 | |
So what happened there? I pull it to come down, is it? | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
-It didn't go up. -Right. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:53 | |
-You were pushing it up, effectively. -Right. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
You held on a little bit. How are the hands? | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
All right. Slightly shooting pain up the back, | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
I must say, but there we are. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
All in a day's work. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
In the Middle Ages, bells were swung from side to side, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
by a rope attached onto or near the head of the bell. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
It was the Reformation that changed everything. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
In a wave of anti-Catholic iconoclasm, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
church fixtures and fittings were destroyed up and down the country. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:23 | |
As the nation's bells were recast and rehung, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
craftsmen took advantage of the latest technology | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
and mounted their bells on wheels. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
Now ringers could control the timing of the bell, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
the direct result was change-ringing, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
the sound of bells being played one after another | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
that we hear every Sunday morning. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
Change ringing quickly became | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
a hugely popular secular hobby. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
Groups sprang up in almost every town and city | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
vying with each other for recognition. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
There are now about 40,000 ringers across the country, | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
but amazingly, the wheel mechanism and change-ringing | 0:06:59 | 0:07:04 | |
never took root on the continent | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
where they still use the medieval system. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
The ringers of Great St Mary's | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
belong to the Cambridge Youths, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
one of the oldest ringing societies in the world. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
There's been change-ringing in this room | 0:07:24 | 0:07:26 | |
since at least 1724. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
So what's going to happen, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:30 | |
is that Patrick, behind us, will start calling pairs of bells to swap | 0:07:30 | 0:07:35 | |
and gradually swapping the pairs of bells | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
will produce a different sequence, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
and it's one that's called Whittingtons. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
7 to 11. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
As nice as it may sound to the ear, | 0:07:49 | 0:07:51 | |
no-one in this room is trying to make music. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
The bells are numbered 1 to 12 from the highest to the lowest, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
and the ringers swap the order they're rung in | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
to create ever-changing sequences of notes. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
So that's number eight | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
and number nine. Yeah? | 0:08:10 | 0:08:13 | |
Dah-dah dah-dah dum! | 0:08:13 | 0:08:14 | |
8 to 11. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 | |
This is called change-ringing, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
a system that has barely altered in over 350 years, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
and although it's simple in theory, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
it requires furious concentration. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
It's the raw material Charles has to work with. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
Bravo. That was amazing! | 0:08:38 | 0:08:39 | |
Turn again, Whittington, I do believe. Incredible! | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
Musically speaking, let's face it, bells haven't much to recommend them. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
They can only play loud. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
They can only play on beats. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
They can't even do dotted rhythms or syncopations. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
They certainly can't pick out melody. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
Plus, bell-ringers don't think in the same way | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
as a musician like me. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
They don't think even in terms of tunes or melody. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:08 | |
They're thinking in terms of numbers. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:10 | |
8 to 11. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:11 | |
So that's a challenge, for me as much as for them, | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
to find some common ground in the middle. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
We don't want to end up with something | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
which sounds like an artful experiment. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
We've got to end up with something | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
which is just bloody good music. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
Charles is starting to understand the musical constraints | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
of church bells and change-ringing, | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
but more challenges lie ahead. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:37 | |
I've come to the top of the tower at Great St Mary's | 0:09:37 | 0:09:40 | |
to get the lie of the land, | 0:09:40 | 0:09:41 | |
to see where my various musical components | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
are going to be. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:45 | |
So the Market Square's down there. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
Beyond that you see the tower of St Andrew the Great, tower number two. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
Then over here, St Edward's. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
I've never conducted anything where the individual | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
musical elements are this far apart before. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
I simply have no idea if I'm going to be able to make it work. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
One thing that will greatly help create a harmonious piece of music, | 0:10:07 | 0:10:10 | |
is if the bells of the different churches | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
are in tune with each other. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
Great St Mary's has a modern ring of 12 bells, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
beautifully tuned in the key of D major. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
Charles' second church is St Andrew the Great. | 0:10:23 | 0:10:26 | |
Rebuilt in 1842, the medieval church on this site | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
used to guard one of the gateways to the old city. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:32 | |
Four to five. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:36 | |
Now, the University Guild of Ringers | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
hold their practice sessions here every Thursday night. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
Bravo, guys! Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
They don't seem that loud, the bells outside. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
Are there windows or... | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
There's large wooden sheets over the, all the louvres | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
because there's a college over the road. | 0:10:57 | 0:10:59 | |
We've heavily dampened the sound of the bells. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
Do you think you'd be allowed to take those off? | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
They're fairly permanent. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
If you can't remove the baffles, you can't remove them. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
-You've got eight bells here? -Yes. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
Eight bells. Nice descending major scale, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
about A major, I'd say, roughly. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
Everyone agree? | 0:11:16 | 0:11:17 | |
The authority in these believes they're in G. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
Does he? | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
That's open to dispute. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:23 | |
Yeah, well, I suppose it depends on what part of the country you're from. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:27 | |
G or A, any ringing here | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
won't be in tune with the D major bells at Great St Mary's. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:35 | |
Charles' final church is St Edward's, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
just off the southwest corner of the Market Square. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:42 | |
St Edward's holds a unique place in English history. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:46 | |
Here in 1525, | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
standing in what is now called the Latimer Pulpit, | 0:11:49 | 0:11:52 | |
Robert Barnes gave one of the first sermons | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
of the English Reformation. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:57 | |
Here Charles will be working with tower captain Ali Finn. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:02 | |
So we go through the tower door, here. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
Ali first became involved with the church in 1994, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
as part of a restoration effort to save its original medieval bells. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:13 | |
They're amazingly old! They look almost like Grecian urns. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
Yes! So this is the base of the old frame, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
the actual oak frame that the bells were hanging in, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:23 | |
which, as you can see, is quite fragile. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
It's lovely you've been able to keep it, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
the original structure. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:29 | |
All the bells here are 17th century or earlier, | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
but Sancta Anna, cast in 1470, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
is one of the oldest ringable bells in the county. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
It's a bit narrow as you come through here. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
And here we are, on the gallery. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
What a great view! | 0:12:45 | 0:12:46 | |
You can see everything going on down there and they can see you at work. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
Yes, yeah. And you often catch the, er, little children, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
especially down in the corner there, | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
they're looking up to see how the sound's being made | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
and all the people pulling on these ropes. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:01 | |
At St Ed's, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
Charles has a ring of six bells in the scale of D major. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
They should match Great St Mary's perfectly, | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
but they were cast over a period of 200 years, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
when bell technology was in its infancy. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
BELL RESOUNDS REPEATEDLY | 0:13:20 | 0:13:25 | |
-That's the tenor. -OK, that's roughly an A. Very nice. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:33 | |
So now the oldest one. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:36 | |
BELL PEALS A TINNIER NOTE | 0:13:38 | 0:13:40 | |
A very bright B! | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
One thing that's really interesting about these bells, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
and more than at Great St Mary's, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
is when the clapper rests on the bell, it damps it very fast. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
You don't get that ringing on. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
BELL CHIMES WITH A CLEARER NOTE | 0:13:56 | 0:13:59 | |
This one will probably sound louder cos it's nearer the door. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:02 | |
Charles has now heard all the bells at his disposal | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
and no one set matches another. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
Nothing on this project is turning out as he had expected. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
Beautiful. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
Before I set out on this journey of discovery into bells | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
I had some, I think, what were actually | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
totally outlandish notions of what might be possible. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
I thought in my mind it would be perfectly possible | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
to ghost out the elements of a theme, a tune, in one tower | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
and then halfway through, pass it on seamlessly to the next | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
which would then pass it on seamlessly to the third tower. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
I mean, that's pie in the sky. Completely impossible, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
the very idea that you can actually get towers | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
in separate places to synchronise with each other, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
as I now realise, it's a completely nuts idea! | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
But when you're working creatively, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:54 | |
it actually gets interesting when you recognise the limitations | 0:14:54 | 0:14:58 | |
around what it is you're trying to do. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:00 | |
In a way, if the sky was always the limit, | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
you'd be embarrassed by the range of choice. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
Charles is ready to start devising his bell extravaganza, | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
but before he does, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:16 | |
he's come to visit Taylor's Bell Foundry in Loughborough. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
Up close and personal with bells, Charles has realised that | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
each one produces a complex sound full of different notes. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
Taylor's are one of only two bell foundries remaining in the UK, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
and it was here that the art of bell-tuning | 0:15:39 | 0:15:42 | |
was perfected more than 100 years ago. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:45 | |
This is the main part of the works. The works was built here in 1859. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:49 | |
-Specifically for the bell foundry? -Yes. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:51 | |
Across the road, through those double doors, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
is where the bells are moulded and cast. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:56 | |
Down the far end, we've got the joiners' shop, | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
which is where all the woodwork that we need is made. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
That's where the wheels are made? | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
That's it - stays, sliders, all sorts of bits and pieces. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
And the really exciting bit for me is the room over there | 0:16:06 | 0:16:10 | |
which is the tuning shop, | 0:16:10 | 0:16:11 | |
where the bells that come across from the foundry | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
get tuned and turned into musical instruments. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:16 | |
Every bell produces thousands | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
of different notes called partials. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
As bell master, it's Andrew's job to tune these partials. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
So what we've got is a modern bell that's harmonically tuned | 0:16:27 | 0:16:31 | |
and, if memory serves me, it's somewhere round about note B. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
But what we're actually hearing there is not just one note, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:41 | |
there are five very obvious notes | 0:16:41 | 0:16:44 | |
fairly low down in the human hearing range. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
The lowest is where the whole bell is resonating in and out, | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
if you can imagine that. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:52 | |
And that's called the hum note. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
LOW NOTE RESONATES | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
And now the next partial is an octave above that. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
Again, another note B. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
HIGHER NOTE WHISPERS | 0:17:07 | 0:17:09 | |
-It's magic, isn't it? -Beautiful. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
And then we've got a minor third | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
which is the mournful sound you get out of a church bell. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
HIGH NOTE RESONATES | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
-Right, there it is. -And then there's another octave. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
Another B, the nominal. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
VERY HIGH NOTE JUST AUDIBLE | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
That one is the most important one in terms of determining the pitch of the bell, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
cos although it doesn't come out strongly when you hit it with a fork, | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
it's that one that drives the pitch that the ear perceives. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:39 | |
If I strike the bell again... | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
ALL NOTES RESONATE RICHLY TOGETHER | 0:17:41 | 0:17:42 | |
All of a sudden, you can hear all of those partials. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:45 | |
The mind can reconcile it because it's just had it pointed out to it. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
Why is it that a bell produces so many notes? | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
It's to do with the complexity of the shape. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
You've got, if you like, the marrying together of two shapes. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
You've got this vase-shaped aspect to the bell | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
where it comes up and it's flared out, | 0:18:01 | 0:18:03 | |
and there is some modes of vibration that are involved in the whole body of the bell, | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
certainly the hum note - the lowest one we can hear. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:09 | |
In addition to that, you've got the ring-driven mode of vibration | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
which is, if you could imagine lopping the top part of the bell off | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
and just having a ring of metal, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:19 | |
and imagine that vibrating in a mode that's effectively at right angles | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
to the way that the whole body vibration goes. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
And that is the one that gives the very much more intense harmonics. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:31 | |
Up until the 19th century, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:36 | |
tuning a bell was an unsophisticated process that consisted largely of | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
hacking chunks of metal from the rim of the bell. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
But in the 1860s, John William Taylor I became obsessed with | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
the fact that all English bells sounded out of tune. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
For decades, he and his sons experimented | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
until they had devised a completely new system of tuning. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
Using perfectly pitched tuning forks | 0:19:03 | 0:19:05 | |
and a huge vertical borer, Taylor started to reach | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
parts of the bell which had hitherto been left untouched, | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
allowing the main partials in the bell to be isolated and tuned. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
Machining metal out of the bell counter-intuitively actually lowers the pitch of the bell. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:23 | |
By machining metal, say, out of the corner of the bell, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
we can lower the fundamental. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
By machining the sound bar of the bell, we can lower the nominal. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
-That's a lot of metal that's come out of there. -Yes. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
So this is the computer programme | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
and you can see there's a discrete set of peaks | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
which relates to each of the partials. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
A desired finish pitch, and then it tells you in sense, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
which is a hundredth of a semitone, how are away we are from that. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
And having seen that, I can then relate that to how much metal | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
needs to be machined off it in order to get the finished result. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
-Obviously, this is of paramount importance. If you took too much off, you've blown it. -Absolutely, yeah. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:03 | |
Well, you don't look worried. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
-Well, we're a bell factory. -THEY LAUGH | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
Taylor's produced their first set of harmonically tuned bells in 1896. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:14 | |
Since that date, they have cast and hung | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
some of the most important bells in the country. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
Among them, in 2009, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
the 12 bells of Great St Mary's in Cambridge. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
Charles has decided that whatever music he creates with tower bells, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:37 | |
change-ringing must be at the heart of it. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
And one of the ringers from Great St Mary's, Philip Earis, | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
has offered to help him compose | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
something completely new for the event. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
From my side, I think... | 0:20:49 | 0:20:51 | |
there are several very attractive arrangements of bells. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:56 | |
So, I say we start with rounds. A straight scale. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
1, 2, 3, ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
There's a very well-known change where all the odd-numbered bells ring first | 0:21:02 | 0:21:06 | |
and all the even-numbered bells ring after that, so the interval... | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
CHARLES HUMS THAT PATTERN | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
Exactly, exactly. And that change is called Queens. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
OK, so your challenge | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
-is to get to go from here to here... -Mmm. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
..but moving only one bell at a time. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:24 | |
-Oh, goodness. It's like doing a Rubik's Cube. -It is. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
We might start just swapping six and seven. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
What Philip is composing is called a method. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
A mathematical pattern for ringers to follow, | 0:21:33 | 0:21:36 | |
so that they can ring countless changes without repeating any. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:40 | |
The earliest methods have names like Grandsire and Plain Bob | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
and were first recorded in 1668 | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
by Fabian Stedman in his book, Tintinnalogia. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
Methods allow ringers to ring changes almost endlessly, | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
but any performance of 5,000 or more | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
is recorded for posterity and called a peal. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
The longest peal that has been rung, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
which I was in and which David Pipe was in, was 72,000 changes | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
on six bells. That lasted a bit over 24 hours. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
What did you do about, like, toilet breaks? | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
Er, that was slightly delicate. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
We, er, for food, drink and toilet breaks, as you might imagine, | 0:22:16 | 0:22:20 | |
there are some challenges there. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:22 | |
We managed to...this was ringing hand bells, so we had two hand bells each, so our hands weren't free. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:27 | |
-Did someone else have to, you know? -No, er... -HE LAUGHS | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
There was once a peal of 40,000 changes rung on tower bells, | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
-and for toilet breaks a bucket was passed around for that. -HE LAUGHS | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
That was an all-male band. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
We had a sort of arrangement | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
which babies more frequently are used to, really, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
-to cover for our toilet breaks. -Did you? | 0:22:46 | 0:22:48 | |
And, of course, it must feel terrible | 0:22:48 | 0:22:50 | |
if you are the one that lets the side down? | 0:22:50 | 0:22:52 | |
Once, when I was ringing a long peal, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
the ringing broke down after about 13 or 14 hours. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
As we'd been ringing for quite a long time, one of the ringers tried to feed themselves. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
It was like a Greek tragedy, | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
watching the bell just go from order into chaos. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
What did you do? Walk out with your tail between your legs? | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
There was a bit of silence for a while, | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
then we decided we would go to the pub and have a few beers | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
and find a date when we could do it again. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:19 | |
In due course, we did manage to complete the peal. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
Anyhow, back to the work in hand. So... | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
That should be a six. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:27 | |
2, 4, 6, 8, 10... | 0:23:27 | 0:23:29 | |
1, 3, 2, 5, 7, 4, 9, 6, 8, 11, 10, 12, | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
11, 9, 7 and 5, 3, 1. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:36 | |
HE SIGHS | 0:23:36 | 0:23:37 | |
Well, my head is just bulging with numbers - rrrrrrr! - | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
running through like some abacus gone mad. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
It definitely takes a very particular kind of mind and a mind that I don't have, really. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:49 | |
Philip, however, could eat, breathe and sleep numbers - he would feel complete comfort. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
It is really interesting to understand that | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
within the world of music, which is a very broad world, | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
there are some almost intangible things to some of us. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:05 | |
My whole approach to music, my experience in music and how it's made | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
has come from such a contrary position - | 0:24:08 | 0:24:10 | |
not a contrary position, but a very different position. So I find it baffling. Interesting, but baffling. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:16 | |
With Philip, Charles has now devised one element of his piece of music. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:22 | |
But the limitations of tower bells and change-ringing | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
are still causing him concern. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
It's obvious that we should base the performance | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
here in the Market Square, equidistant between the three towers | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
but - and it's a big "but" - I had really hoped that | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
the bell towers would be able to give me more melodic interest. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
But the fact is, for all sorts of good reasons, | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
they're stuck in change-ringing. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
I need another element. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:45 | |
Also something to root us here. To give us a reason to be here. To cement the whole thing together. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:50 | |
In search of a solution, Charles has come to Bottisham, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
a small village about five miles outside Cambridge. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
MUSIC: "If I Were A Rich Man" from Fiddler On The Roof | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
Here at Mary Batten's house, | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
the Bottisham Hand Bell Ringers meet every Wednesday night. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
Bravo. Thank you very much indeed. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
Wow. It's so nice to hear that sound. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
I've been in that kind of wonderful, great big brash world | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
which is tower bell-ringing for the last few days, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
and to hear the sweet, unctuous tones | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
of your hand bells is a really lovely contrast to that. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
I sense a lot of passion for hand bell-ringing in the room. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
How long have we been ringing? About 24, 25 years? | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
-Yes, some of us. -I would say. | 0:25:58 | 0:25:59 | |
This team has been ringing 24, 25 years? | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
Not the same people, obviously. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:03 | |
-How long have you been hand bell-ringing? -Five years. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
-And how long have you been ringing? -Same. -So you came into it together? | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
Wow, that's an amazing thing. I try and do things with my kids and they go, "Don't, Dad, it's embarrassing!" | 0:26:10 | 0:26:15 | |
How lovely that you don't feel this about your mum. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:26:18 | 0:26:20 | |
-He's saying nothing. -Moving on! | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
I'm intrigued to know that you've never played anything from memory, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
only because obviously the nature of it is that | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
you are very, very focused on what's in front of you. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
-Yeah, oh yes. -And we never smile. -Ah! | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
No, you look like you're in pleasure, a pleasurable mode. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
-Yeah, yeah. -You don't look grim. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
I'm intrigued because, because what is music if it's not communication? | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
In a way, when music really lifts off, certainly I find as a conductor, | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
is when the orchestra with whom I'm working are so familiar with the music they're finding the spaces | 0:26:49 | 0:26:54 | |
in between having to hoover up the information, if you see what I mean. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
-Yes. Mmm. -The difference with this is you're playing a part | 0:26:58 | 0:27:02 | |
and so it's not always as easy to pick up the direction of where you're going. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
That's such a valid point. Normally with any melodic instrument you are used to, | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
-to, spinning melodies. -Yes. -And you play all the notes of that melody, | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
whereas you were all kind of individual components | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
within a larger organism. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
It's like a rehearsal. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:20 | |
If we've got one person missing, you haven't got the complete tune. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
Have you tried ringing bells yourself? | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
A little tiny bit. Not very much. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
MUTED LAUGHTER | 0:27:31 | 0:27:32 | |
Why, do you want to challenge me? | 0:27:32 | 0:27:34 | |
MUSIC: "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" From Oklahoma | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
As with their weightier cousins, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:47 | |
hand bells have been around for centuries. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
In medieval times, they were used to ward off evil spirits | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
and rung when someone passed away. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:56 | |
But playing tunes on hand bells | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
really took off in the Victorian period. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
Competitions were held in the Belle Vue Gardens in Manchester, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
attracting hundreds of teams. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
And in musical halls up and down the country, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
tappers and novelty ringers became staple acts. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
-Oooh. -Hang on a minute. -We're not together at the end of it. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
Oh I missed the first time bar! I'm so sorry. Oh dear, oh dear. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
Oh, dear, oh, dear! | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
I'm glad you get things wrong as well. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:42 | |
I tell you what, the real challenge for me, I thought, "Blimey, it's suddenly a B flat | 0:28:42 | 0:28:46 | |
"and I've got a B and an A here," and I'm like this! | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
Hey! Terrible. Much to your amusement, I notice. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
Thanks for the support. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:55 | |
It's a completely different way of thinking. It's fascinating. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:59 | |
It's been great to meet you all. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:01 | |
Thank you for, for letting me come to your, to your session. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
-And I'm be seeing you all soon. -Thank you for coming. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
-Yes, we look forward to it. -Great, cool. Thank you. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
-Cheerio, Charles. -Cheers. All the best. -ALL: BYE. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
Charles' plan is to devise a performance | 0:29:14 | 0:29:17 | |
which combines some church bell change-ringing, | 0:29:17 | 0:29:20 | |
with some hand bell tune-ringing. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:22 | |
But these are two worlds which normally never mix. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
I can make a piece of music | 0:29:25 | 0:29:27 | |
featuring bells work on a number of different levels. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:29 | |
Er, at the most sophisticated, | 0:29:29 | 0:29:32 | |
it might be a wonderfully challenging experience | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
for the players, but I think what I, what's really clear | 0:29:35 | 0:29:39 | |
is there are certain limitations to the way hand bell-ringers work, | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
just as there are certainly limitations | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
to the way that tower bell-ringers work. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:47 | |
I'm not going to be able to get them to do some wonderful extended thing | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
with lots of kind of flashy passages and fanfare-like moments. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
Indeed, I can't even have too many different ideas. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
I think the key thing is going to be simplicity, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
so that everyone can kind of really lock into the groove, as it were, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
of one principal musical narrative. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
So I've got to be immensely careful about not being overly ambitious, | 0:30:05 | 0:30:09 | |
and my instinct is always to try and push further, go further beyond... | 0:30:09 | 0:30:14 | |
and I just have to rein that in slightly. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
Determined to keep it simple, Charles decides | 0:30:20 | 0:30:23 | |
to base his final piece around one well-known folk tune. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:28 | |
For a long time, it was popularly held that Greensleeves | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
was written by Henry VIII, a monarch with close connections to Cambridge. | 0:30:34 | 0:30:39 | |
He founded Trinity College, | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
and completed the world-famous King's College Chapel. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:48 | |
Now that Charles has chosen his tune, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
he must arrange it for hand bells. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
The key challenge is to find ways of marrying | 0:30:56 | 0:30:59 | |
what are actually very disparate things - | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
tower bells and hand bells. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:04 | |
Our performance will have started with some very fiery change-ringing. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:08 | |
Then off the back of that, the hand bells can start very, | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
very nakedly and gently to pick out the tune. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
By the time we're getting into the second verse, | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
gradually, I'll unleash more harmony from the hand bells, | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
and the kind of figuration I'm going to use is based on the changes. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
I've got here, written out on a stave, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
the exact notes of the changes that will have been played | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
in the first portion of the piece by towers. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
Do you see, like falling scales - | 0:31:33 | 0:31:34 | |
# Ya dah, dee dah, dee dah, dee dah, dee-dah-dah bom. # | 0:31:34 | 0:31:38 | |
That's going to be the essence of the harmony, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
so that the hand bells have a direct correlation | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
to what the tower bells have been doing. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
Charles has managed to gather 30 hand bell players from across the Eastern Counties, | 0:31:45 | 0:31:51 | |
and borrowed two five-octave sets of bells. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
I've got some sympathy with Rossini right now - | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
Rossini, amazing Italian composer, very fast composer | 0:31:58 | 0:32:02 | |
and he'd write operas in, in sort of record time, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:04 | |
but he'd leave the overture till the end, | 0:32:04 | 0:32:07 | |
because the overture is the first piece of music the audience hears. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
It introduces all the themes, all the main characters, | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
so obviously it's the last thing the composer invariably writes. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
And Rossini would apparently leave the writing of the overture later and later - | 0:32:16 | 0:32:21 | |
on some occasions, even to the very day of the first performance, | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
and the theatre managers would be screaming, "When is Rossini going to write the overture?!" | 0:32:24 | 0:32:29 | |
And apparently they would lock him in a room, they'd give him one plate of cold pasta | 0:32:29 | 0:32:34 | |
and one glass of wine, and he wasn't allowed out until he'd finished. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
Although some hand bell players work from numbers, in the same way as tower bell-ringers, | 0:32:40 | 0:32:45 | |
everyone here tonight can read conventional musical notation. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:49 | |
The D on the quavers is the first... | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
Most simply mark in their own parts. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
Right, ladies and gentlemen! | 0:32:58 | 0:33:00 | |
First of all, it's fantastic to have you all here. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:02 | |
Thank you so much for giving up part of your precious Saturday | 0:33:02 | 0:33:06 | |
to come and involve yourselves in this kind of experiment - | 0:33:06 | 0:33:09 | |
strange and hopefully wonderful musical experiment based around bells. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:13 | |
Now, the tune that I want to use at the heart of this piece is Greensleeves. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:17 | |
It contains that kind of essential English quality, | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
what Shakespeare called the dying fall. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
In other words, it's essentially melancholic, as I suppose | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
we all are essentially a little melancholic. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
You know - it does rain a lot in our country, and the thing about the dying fall... | 0:33:29 | 0:33:33 | |
HE SINGS TUNE OF GREENSLEEVES # Dah dee, dah dah-dah-dah, dying fall | 0:33:33 | 0:33:38 | |
# Dah dah dee, dah dah-dah-dah, dying fall. # Right? And that repeats. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
Brief burst of sunshine in the chorus - | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
# DAH, DAH, dah-dah, dying fall, dah-dah-dee dah-dah-daaah... # Right? | 0:33:44 | 0:33:50 | |
There we are, that's the English race personified in melody, as far | 0:33:50 | 0:33:55 | |
as I'm concerned. So, er, let's have a little go and see how we get on. | 0:33:55 | 0:34:00 | |
So nice and slow. One, two... | 0:34:00 | 0:34:03 | |
THEY SLOWLY PLAY GREENSLEEVES One, two, three, one, two... | 0:34:03 | 0:34:09 | |
One... | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
One... | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
One... | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
OK, good. Good, good, good. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:39 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, fantastic for a first effort. Fantastic. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:45 | |
Now, ladies and gentlemen, look carefully at bar 66. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
Hands up here who's a tower bell-ringer... Two. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
Well, I'm very pleased to say to you that Queens | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
has found its way into Greensleeves at exactly this point. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
DECREASING IN PITCH # Dah dah, dee dah, dee dum Bee dah, dee dah, dee dum... # | 0:34:56 | 0:35:01 | |
Right? Hurrah! The tower bell comes to the hand bell. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:05 | |
So, let's try from 66 and see how we get on. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:09 | |
THEY PLAY THE PASSAGE | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
UNEXPECTED CHORD Mmm, a sudden and very spicy harmonic shift there. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
Suddenly an F-sharp major 7! Which should shock the hell out of the audience. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:33 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
Let's have a long pause on that magnificent chord. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
THEY PLAY THE SAME PASSAGE | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
Now... | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
THEY ARRIVE AT THE CHORD | 0:35:45 | 0:35:47 | |
Bravo, ladies and gentlemen. A very good evening's work. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
Charles is keen to find every means possible | 0:35:58 | 0:36:01 | |
to draw his church bells and his hand bells together. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
In his arrangement of Greensleeves, the hand bells imitate the church bells - | 0:36:05 | 0:36:10 | |
and now, flying in the face of everything he's learnt, | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
he's going to try to get church bells to imitate the hand bells. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:18 | |
For this experiment, Charles has chosen St Edwards. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
-Ali, how's it going? Nice to see you. -And you. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:27 | |
And Ali has brought along steeple-keeper and engineer Tom Ridgeman for help. | 0:36:27 | 0:36:32 | |
Tom's the steeple-keeper here. | 0:36:32 | 0:36:34 | |
So you, you get the essence of what it is I'd like to achieve? | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
You want chiming, you want music | 0:36:38 | 0:36:40 | |
-rather than just our plain old bell-ringing routine? -Yeah. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:44 | |
At the heart we've got Greensleeves, | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
and it would be amazing to think these six bells could play their part | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
in actually sounding out elements of that melody | 0:36:49 | 0:36:51 | |
and I'm very aware that with the method of change-ringing, | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
-that's not going to be possible. -Yeah, that's right. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
BUT there's a system that they use in churches called Ellacombe chimes, | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
where they put hammers on the bells and they use strings and pulleys | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
and stuff and they can play them a bit like pianos | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
that you can just play notes on. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
-So, you're controlling the clapper hitting the bell. -Yeah. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:10 | |
They normally have special hammers attached to the bells - | 0:37:10 | 0:37:14 | |
we don't have that, | 0:37:14 | 0:37:15 | |
-but we can rig something up that sort of vaguely simulates that. -Fantastic! | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
That's kind of reasonably rigid. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
Tie round the clapper, between the ball and the fly. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
Tom's plan is to use string and a pulley | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
to attach the clapper directly to the bell rope. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
Right, there we go. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
Extraordinary! HE LAUGHS | 0:37:41 | 0:37:43 | |
I mean, it's like Heath Robinson comes to the bell tower, really, isn't it? | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
MUTED CHIMING | 0:37:47 | 0:37:49 | |
I think we're onto something, aren't we? | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
It's so exciting that they're blazing a new trail. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
They haven't tried this before... | 0:38:01 | 0:38:03 | |
but it does mean that we can play something of a Greensleeves... | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
well, a fragment of the Greensleeves melody on these bells. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:10 | |
I'm really thrilled. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
I wonder if they'll be loud enough, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
but you know, we'll only know by trying. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:16 | |
MUTED CHIMING | 0:38:16 | 0:38:18 | |
That works! | 0:38:19 | 0:38:21 | |
When Tom and Ali have rigged all six bells, | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
they gather the ringing team to see if they can make musical history. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:29 | |
So, if we were to do the first phrase, | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
we'd be going, erm... # Five, three, two, one. # | 0:38:32 | 0:38:37 | |
-Shall we just try that? -Yeah, so you're first. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
I'm five, you're three, two, one, right? So... | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
Hear that? Yay! | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
The first four notes of Greensleeves. Amazing! | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
-Surely the first time ever in this amazing old tower. -Absolutely! | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
So we now extend it. | 0:38:57 | 0:38:58 | |
Obviously, we're missing a note because, strictly speaking, we go | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
# Five, three, two, one da, one, two, four, six. # | 0:39:01 | 0:39:08 | |
OK, so just see how far we get there. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:10 | |
-Yeah, but you will need to conduct. -All right... Here we go then, so... | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
SHE PLAYS WRONG NOTE | 0:39:20 | 0:39:22 | |
-Oh! -Oh! | 0:39:22 | 0:39:23 | |
# Bah. # THEY CHUCKLE | 0:39:29 | 0:39:31 | |
# Bab bah-bah. # | 0:39:42 | 0:39:44 | |
Ah! How nice. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:48 | |
I'm just delighted with that! | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
-Do you think Henry VIII would be thrilled? -Yes. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
I think he'd be thrilled, wouldn't he? | 0:39:53 | 0:39:55 | |
The other historic thing about what we're doing, | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
it seems to me, is that we are ringing dotted rhythms. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
# Dum-dah pah-bee pah-pah bee. # | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
Now, you never get dotted rhythms in change-ringing, or obvious reasons, | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
you just get... Right? | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
These bells must be thinking, "What on earth is going on to us!" | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:40:13 | 0:40:14 | |
PEALING BELLS | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
Things are starting to come together. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
The only thing Charles is missing is a rousing finale, | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
something he hopes the ringers of Great St Mary's | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
can help him deliver. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:27 | |
So what I'm really excited to hear | 0:40:28 | 0:40:30 | |
is what would happen if you had a chord. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
For instance, just two bells, then three bells, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:34 | |
then four bells, then five. Is that really hard to do? | 0:40:34 | 0:40:37 | |
-That would be pretty hard... -Would it? | 0:40:37 | 0:40:39 | |
But we're going to do this. OK, we'll do this. So... | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
Phil's going to start... | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
and we'll say two whole pulls... and then two whole pulls, | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
two whole pulls and everyone joins in two whole pulls later. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:53 | |
So everyone's going... She's gone. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:55 | |
OTHER BELLS JOIN IN, SLIGHTLY OUTOFTIME | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
Playing chords on church bells is rare. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:10 | |
BELLS FALL INTO TIME | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
Sometimes on special occasions or at the end of a wedding ceremony, | 0:41:13 | 0:41:18 | |
all the bells of the church will ring in unison. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
This is called firing... | 0:41:21 | 0:41:23 | |
..but it's never done quite like this. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
Stand. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:30 | |
Yes! | 0:41:35 | 0:41:36 | |
You've made an old man very happy, that's incredible! | 0:41:39 | 0:41:42 | |
Absolutely incredible. You were grinning from ear to ear. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
Well, yes, well, we don't do that every day. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:47 | |
Or every year, really. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:49 | |
You were all in such great control of your bells. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:51 | |
-Presumably you could get periodically slower, you could do a rallentando. -Could do, yeah. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:55 | |
Yeah, and how would that work? Would someone be calling? | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
Would you call an up-beat or... | 0:41:58 | 0:42:01 | |
These things have never been done, Charles... | 0:42:01 | 0:42:05 | |
-you're pushing back the barriers. -I'm pushing back... OK. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
So, the only other thing I'd like to do is a more tuneful firing. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
I'd just love to hear what would happen | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
-if you had a three-note chord. -Yeah. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:13 | |
I can guarantee this is the first time this has EVER been done. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:17 | |
Rallentando! | 0:42:25 | 0:42:27 | |
Stand. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:40 | |
See, that was difficult. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
Yeah! That was amazing. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:49 | |
-Really amazing! -We need to practise that! | 0:42:49 | 0:42:51 | |
Of course, but the principle is a good one, | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
-and those two chords are so beautiful. -Yeah. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:56 | |
Charles now has all the elements for his final performance, | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
and the groups are busy rehearsing their parts. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:06 | |
But with everything going full-steam ahead, | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
Charles is taking a day out of his hectic schedule. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
-Hello. -Are you Trevor? -I'm Trevor. Hello, Charles, good to meet you. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:20 | |
-Thank you for having me here. -Welcome to Bourneville. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:22 | |
Charles has come to Bourneville, | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
the model village created by the chocolate manufacturer George Cadbury in the 1890s, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:30 | |
and he's here to see an extraordinary instrument - | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
a cross between a church tower and an organ, called a carillon. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:39 | |
So now we have the, er, carillon right in front of us, here. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:42 | |
-There are 48 bells... -48 bells?! | 0:43:42 | 0:43:44 | |
48 bells. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:46 | |
The largest bell, which is the one right at the top there, | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
is three and a quarter tonnes in weight | 0:43:49 | 0:43:51 | |
and the smallest one is 12 pounds in weight | 0:43:51 | 0:43:56 | |
and it's chromatic four octaves, but with the lower C sharp missing. | 0:43:56 | 0:43:59 | |
BELLS PEAL AN INTRICATE TUNE | 0:43:59 | 0:44:02 | |
The first carillon was built in Belgium 500 years ago. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
Despite widespread use throughout the low countries, | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
carillons didn't make it over to England | 0:44:15 | 0:44:17 | |
until George Cadbury had this one built in 1906. | 0:44:17 | 0:44:20 | |
Trevor has been playing here every week since 1965. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:37 | |
FURIOUS AND INTRICATE MELODY OF BELS OF MANY PITCHES | 0:44:37 | 0:44:43 | |
Blimey! What do I owe you for that, then? That was extraordinary! | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
Whatever you think it's worth. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:26 | |
You started off with quite a lick with your quavers, then I saw the semiquavers go. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
-I thought, "How on earth is that going to be possible?!" -Yeah. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
One thing that you are absolutely able to get with this instrument | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
is light and shade. One of the things about tower bells | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
is that there is really only one dynamic level. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:43 | |
You can't affect how hard or otherwise the clapper hits the bell. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:46 | |
Here, you've got a lot of control. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:48 | |
Total control, yes. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:50 | |
This mechanism here will either shorten or lengthen | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
the linkage between the clapper and the key, | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
so you've got that potential for pianissimo or... | 0:45:56 | 0:45:59 | |
Fortissimo, yeah. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:02 | |
And the other thing that makes this different | 0:46:02 | 0:46:04 | |
from a standard keyboard instrument | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
is that you can't play static chords. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
What you can do is arpeggiate. That means you're very busy filling in the harmony all the time. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:13 | |
Although you're playing music written for the piano or some other instrument, | 0:46:13 | 0:46:18 | |
you've got to try and produce the sound | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
that was intended by the composer for the original instrument. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
And that involves doing a lot to convert it into music | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
and to make it passionate, if that's the word. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
It does require effort. You need to exploit the full range of dynamics | 0:46:30 | 0:46:34 | |
that the instrument's capable of giving, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
from the very loud, and obviously, it can be very loud, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
or very quiet as well. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:42 | |
-Right, can I have a go? -Certainly you can, yes. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:45 | |
You mentioned this evening hymn... | 0:46:50 | 0:46:52 | |
PLODDING MELODY | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
-All right so far? -That's a very familiar tune in Bournville! | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
Charles is an organ scholar who has performed in public countless times. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:13 | |
I've slightly gone over, haven't I? Cor blimey, it's very, very weird! | 0:47:13 | 0:47:18 | |
But the technique used to play a carillon | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
is like no other instrument. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
CHARLES HUMS ALONG | 0:47:22 | 0:47:24 | |
JUMBLE OF TOLLING BELLS | 0:47:24 | 0:47:29 | |
Something like that. And then how does one employ the left hand? | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
My goodness me! | 0:47:32 | 0:47:33 | |
I really can only do right hand... | 0:47:39 | 0:47:41 | |
-We could do a duet, you know. -Yeah. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:43 | |
MANY BELLS RING AT ONCE | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
Hey-hey! | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
Charles has now experienced the full range of music bells have to offer. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:11 | |
With nothing left to learn, | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
it's time to unveil his unique bell extravaganza. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
Charles is going to be conducting the three church towers using a video link. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:35 | |
This is a system common in operas | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
where the conductor needs to signal to an off-stage chorus, | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
but it's never before been used to conduct bell towers. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
For the purposes of our piece today, GSM is one, OK. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:52 | |
STAG's is two. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:53 | |
St Edward's will be three. What could possibly go wrong(?) | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
We could forget! | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
With the help of Max and Katrina, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:04 | |
Charles fits the bells of St Andrew the Great with half muffles - | 0:49:04 | 0:49:09 | |
leather pads designed to dampen the sound. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:11 | |
I just think it's going to sound stunning. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
I've never actually ever heard a half-muffled ring before. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
Yeah, the moment of truth is fast approaching. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:23 | |
I mean, we've had rehearsal time, but it's been in isolated chunks. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
They're all separate building blocks | 0:49:27 | 0:49:29 | |
and it's only in the performance that we see if they fit together. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:33 | |
So that is the most nerve-wracking thing about it. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
But, you know, I'm a chancer. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
I'm one of life's chancers, and that's why I like performing. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
Because when you get out there, the only way is forwards. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, a very good afternoon to you all. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:54 | |
We are here today to celebrate something very, very special | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
and deeply ancient within our culture, | 0:49:59 | 0:50:02 | |
and that is the music of bells. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
And we are going to attempt something for you now | 0:50:05 | 0:50:08 | |
which has never, ever been attempted before. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:10 | |
We're going to attempt to make a special piece of music, | 0:50:10 | 0:50:16 | |
which combines three sets of tower bells and about 30 hand bells. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:20 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Bells of Cambridge. The Sound Of Bells! | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
BELLS PEAL REPEATEDLY DOWN A SCALE | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
SECOND TOWER JOINS IN PEALING DOWN A DIFFERENT SCALE | 0:50:55 | 0:50:58 | |
CHANGE-RINGING BEGINS | 0:51:04 | 0:51:09 | |
CACOPHONY OF BELLS, SOME MUFFLED, SOME CLEAR | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
BELLS STOP | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
ETHEREAL RINGING AND SCRAPING | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
ONE SET OF BELLS BEGINS FALTERINGLY TO PLAY "Greensleeves" | 0:52:35 | 0:52:40 | |
THE MELODY CONTINUES, THEN FALTERS AGAIN | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
THE MELODY CONTINUES | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
PAUSE | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
THE "DYING FALL" REPEATS | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
AGAIN THE "DYING FALL", THEN TOWER BELLS CEASE | 0:53:17 | 0:53:21 | |
HAND BELLS PICK UP MELODY | 0:53:25 | 0:53:28 | |
BELLS BEGIN TO HARMONISE THE MELODY | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
MELODY CEASES AND HAND BELLS BEGIN CHANGERINGING PEAL | 0:54:30 | 0:54:35 | |
THEY STOP | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
HAND BELLS RESUME MELODY WITH FALLING CHANGERINGING | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
HAND BELLS AND CHURCH BELLS CHIME ALTERNATELY | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
BELLS CHIME ALL AT ONCE | 0:56:30 | 0:56:35 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:56:58 | 0:57:01 | |
Everyone, take a bow! | 0:57:14 | 0:57:17 | |
-Phew! -Well done, you! | 0:57:17 | 0:57:18 | |
I started this experiment thinking, | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
"Wouldn't it be amazing if this very particular kind of music | 0:57:23 | 0:57:27 | |
"that the church bells make... could it be expanded upon?" | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
"Could it extent beyond its slightly narrow parameters?" | 0:57:31 | 0:57:35 | |
What I suppose I've learnt as a result of doing this project | 0:57:35 | 0:57:39 | |
is that, no, it can't, in one respect. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:43 | |
Bells are hung and work a certain way, | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
so change-ringing has a very good reason for existing as it does. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:50 | |
But it's answered to be a whole bunch of questions about what you might combine that music with. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:56 | |
Not only the hand bells and their lustrous harmonies, | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
but also the idea of bringing another tower and then another tower to bear on it. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:04 | |
The very fact of change-ringing occurring as it has always occurred | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
in combination with another tower also change-ringing, but offset, | 0:58:07 | 0:58:11 | |
you create a very special kind of music. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:13 | |
It's one of the most delightful outdoor musical experiments | 0:58:13 | 0:58:18 | |
I've ever been involved in. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:19 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:40 | 0:58:43 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:43 | 0:58:46 |