Topic: Instrumental Versions - Handbells
Handbells and church tower bells are the same type of instrument distinguished primarily by size. Early Protestant reformers in England saw them differently. They banned the ones as devices used in masses and kept the others because they served necessary civic purposes.
In 1571 Heinrich Bullinger suggested one permissible use in Zürich was the fire bell that was rung at night to warn people "to be careful of their fires." [1] This commonly was called the curfew, and existed when I was a child in Michigan in the 1950s when the town sounded a reminder at 10 pm to people under age 16 to stay indoors.
Bullinger proscribed ringing a bell in storms because it was linked to a belief Satan was responsible and the sound would scare him into calming the weather. [2] However, the need to warn people of danger survived with the tornado warnings and alarms installed in schools for fire drills in my hometown.
Before clocks and watches were commonly available, bells were used to mark time. Bullinger objected to the monastic use of bells that announced the canonical hours, but allowed them to be used to call meetings and to signal the ends of work days. [3]
In my hometown, one of the local factories blew a steam whistle just before the start of the morning and afternoon shifts. The junior and senior high schools used an electric bell at the starts and ends of classes. My summer camp simply substituted bugles.
The most fraught customs for Protestant reformers were those associated with death. Priests rang hand bells when they were on their way to deliver the last rites, and public bells were rung to announce deaths. Many believed these bells kept the spirits from danger on their journey to purgatory where they would remain until their ultimate fate was decided. Many believed those spirits could hear bells, and their ringing kept them calm. Bells were rung for hours on the night before All-Soul’s Day, our Halloween. [4]
Robert Hill believed the priest’s use of a bell was banned because it was a private, rather than public rite. [5] He cited John Hooper, a follower of Bullinger, as an authority. [6] In 1551, the Bishop of Gloucester [7] transformed it into a public tolling "while the sick is in extremes, to admonish the people of their danger, and by that means to solicitate the hearers of the same to pray for the sick person." [8] When the person died, Hooper allowed a bell to ring once as an announcement. [9]
All these practices were dependent on the ability of sound waves to carry long distances. High or low pitch was important, but not the quality of the sound itself. The first reference Hill found in church records to the tone of a bell came from Saint Mary at the Hill in London. In 1510 it asked the reeve to listen to the fourth bell "to determine whether or not it was in tune." [10]
This indication that musicality was becoming important was supported by entries in the church’s records for "stays for the bell wheels" [11] Hill concluded "this was a community which heard the bells’ rings as structured and musical sounds. While they were surely rung to signify liturgical, ceremonial, and civil events, they were also meant to produce sounds that were pleasing to the ear." [12]
What the English called change ringing involved ringing bells in mathematical sequences that explored what was becoming known about the physics of sound some two hundred years before Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. It began as a ritual sponsored by the wealthy to commemorate the deaths of family members, and was acceptable to the church because it assuaged the grief of the living rather than communicated with the dead. [13]
Change ringing evolved into a secular pastime during the first reign of the Stuarts. [14] Once begun it was only a matter of time before the concept of tune was wedded to the activity. A church in Alsace played "Kumbaya" on its five bells in 2016.
Its version differed from Anna Laura Page’s handbell arrangement described in the post 6 December 2018. The ringer or ringers only played the melody. There was no attempt to add a simultaneous harmonic accompaniment or counter tune.
The ringers were attuned to the sounds of their bells and paused between the two iterations, so the listener could hear the start of the second repetition. Page’s version had no cessation of sound in its 58 measures, so the congregation in Middletown’s Congregational church in 2016 simultaneously heard the chords being struck and the accumulated overtones.
The bells at Saint-Pierre were installed in 1723, [A] when the idea of a chromatic scale was still new. Three of the church’s bells matched the 1-3-5 triad that began "Kumbaya." It also had a bell pitched slightly higher that was used in the refrains of lines 1 and 3 that went 6-6-5. It had one lower bell that was used in the second and fourth lines that used 4-3-2 and 4-3-1-2-2-1. [15]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: five bells
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
There were none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5, but played with five, not six, tones
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: two iterations
Notes on Performers
The tower in Wolfisheim was erected in 1492, probably for defense. In the first part of the Reformation, the church became Protestant in 1525, but was returned to the Catholics in 1559. [16] Following the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed some freedom to French Calvinists, Huguenots fled to Wolfisheim [17] on the French frontier.
In 1692 the Saint-Pierre church was declared a simultaneum, [18] which meant it was shared by Catholics and Protestants. [19] It reverted to Lutherans in 1962, when the Catholics built their own church. [20] The congregation rang the bells every Saturday evening to remind townsfolk the next day was Sunday. [21]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by UAG - TV on 3 July 2016.
End Notes
1. Heinrich Bullinger. "Das Glockenläuten, 1571." 462-481 in Heinrich Bullinger, Schriften. Edited by Emidio Campi, Detlef Roth, and Peter Stotz. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 2006. 471-472. Cited by Robert Adam Hill. "The Reformation of the Bells in Early Modern England." PhD. Simon Fraser University, summer 2012. 101. His translation of Bullinger was made by Dick Derksen. Bullinger succeeded Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Protestant church in Zürich [22] where Hill argued he had a strong influence on English Protestant reformers.
2. Bullinger. 475. Cited by Hill. 102.
3. Bullinger. 471-472. Cited by Hill. 102.
4. Hill used the work of Alain Corbin to explicate the funereal uses. Village Bells. London: Papermac, 1999.
5. Hill. 144.
6. Hill. 107. He cited Carrie Euler. Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531-1558. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2006.
7. Wikipedia. "John Hooper (Bishop)." It mentioned his ties to Bullinger.
8. John Hopper. Injunctions of 1551. Reprinted in Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation. Edited by Walter Howard Frere and William McClure Kennedy. London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1910. 2:287. Quoted by Hill. 153.
9. Hooper. 2:287. Cited by Hill. 145.
10. Hill. 84. His source was Henry Littlehales. Medieval Records of a London City Church. London: Early English Text Society, 1905. 273-275.
11. Hill. 85.
12. Hill. 86.
13. Hill. 150. He was discussing the ideas of Claire Gittings. Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England. London: Routledge and Kegan Hall, 1988.
14. Hill. 171. He was discussing John Bunyan’s admission he had enjoyed change ringing as a youth. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. London: George Larkin, 1666.
15. "Wolfisheim, paroisse luthérienne." Wiki-Protestants website.
16. "Eglise protestante Saint-Pierre à Wolfisheim." Patrimoine-de-France website.
17. Donatus Düsterhaus. "Religion in a Time of War: The Case of Lower Alsace, 1789-1794." 313-330 in War in an Age of Revolution, 1775-1815. Edited by Roger Chickering and Stig Förster. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 317.
18. Patrimione.
19. Wikipedia. "Simultaneum."
20. Patrimione.
21. YouTube notes.
22. Wikipedia. "Heinrich Bullinger."
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