Handbell choirs and the music rooms of a church

The handbells you hear on a Sunday morning do not live in the sanctuary. They spend most of the week in a room with padded tables, shelves cut to hold their cases, and a piano that has to be moved before rehearsal. The instrument that gave change ringers a way to practise without emptying a neighbourhood has its own geography inside a church, and in a downtown Waco congregation that geography is usually one plain classroom with a good floor and a door that closes.

The details cited in this entry were checked on Handbell choir rooms.

The tuned sets that became the backbone of Music and the Sunday programme arrived in America by a long route. Brothers Robert and William Cor of Aldbourne in Wiltshire, England, are credited with developing the modern handbell between 1696 and 1724. They had been casting latten bells for hame boxes, part of a horse's harness, and they began tuning their bells more finely for an accurate fundamental tone, then fitted them with hinged clappers that moved in a single plane. That hinge is the whole difference between a handbell and a school bell: the clapper travels back and forth in one direction, held away from the casting by a spring after the strike so the bell rings freely.

Why ringers left the tower in winter

The first customers for tuned sets were not choirs at all. They were change ringers, the people who ring the big bells in a church tower, and their problem was noise and cold. Learning the intricate algorithms of change ringing takes hours of repetition, and neighbours have finite patience. Handbells let a band rehearse the same figures indoors, without the tower's sound carrying over the rooftops, and it was warmer in the local pub than in a stone belfry in January. Those rehearsal sets matched the towers, generally six to twelve bells tuned to a diatonic scale.

From contest stage to American church

English handbell ensembles multiplied during the nineteenth century, especially in the north of England, where competition was serious. An annual contest at Belle Vue Zoological Gardens ran between 1855 and 1925, and the Yorkshire Hand-Bell Ringers Association sponsored contests most years between 1904 and 1932. Crowds of up to 20,000 spectators turned out. The Lancashire Bell-ringers carried the instrument to the United States under contract with P. T. Barnum, touring from 1844 to 1847 as the Swiss Bell-ringers, and handbell acts then worked the Vaudeville and Chautauqua circuits until those venues faded in the early twentieth century.

The reintroduction was a gift. Margaret Shurcliff received a set of ten handbells in London from Arthur Hughes, general manager of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, after she completed two separate two-and-a-half-hour change ringing peals in one day. She organised the Beacon Hill Ringers in 1923, mostly her own children and their friends, and from New England the practice spread. The New England Guild of English Handbell Ringers formed in 1937, the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers in 1954. After the Second World War, American Protestants took handbells into worship, and that quickly became the most common use of a handbell ensemble.

What a Waco congregation actually needs in a room

A set is arranged chromatically on foam-covered tables. The foam protects the bronze surface and keeps a bell from rolling when it is laid on its side, so a rehearsal room needs tables long enough to hold the range in order and level enough that nothing drifts. Sets run from about two octaves, 25 bells, G4 to G6, up to eight octaves and 97 bells, C1 to C9. A small downtown choir may work from three octaves partly because that is what fits the wall and partly because someone has to carry it in and out. A handbell can weigh as little as 7 ounces, around 200 grams, or more than 18 pounds, roughly 8.2 kilograms, and the bass bells are cast in aluminium rather than bell metal because the lighter metal spares the ringer's wrist. Shelving in a church music room is usually cut to case size, and the low bells get the bottom shelves simply because lifting them from shoulder height is a hazard, not a preference.

Where does the sound go on Sunday?

The bell itself gives little choice about placement. To ring one, the player grasps the handle, traditionally leather and often plastic now, holds the bell mouth upward near the shoulder and swings it through an elliptical path so the clapper strikes the inside of the casting. The tone then decays naturally until the ringer damps it against a hand, the body or a padded surface. Because a handbell ensemble works as one composite instrument, each ringer owning particular notes, the group has to stand close enough to see a shared score and to hear the bell next to them. In a downtown sanctuary that usually means the front of the room, near the piano or organ, with the tables set where the ringers can watch a director. The Methodist service music of a Sunday morning shapes that placement: an introit, an offertory or a moment before the sermon, short enough for a piece that lasts about four minutes, which is the typical length of handbell writing. Longer and more intricate works tend to pair bells with other instruments.

Do the room's walls change the ring?

They do. The overtones of an English handbell sit a twelfth above the fundamental, an octave and a perfect fifth, where Dutch bells such as Petit & Fritsen emphasise the minor tenth or major tenth. A room full of hard plaster and glass returns those overtones quickly, which is a gift in a resonant Gothic Revival nave and a problem in a low-ceilinged classroom where the sound piles up. Church Buildings and Sacred space of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were designed for unamplified voices and pipe organs, and a handbell sits comfortably in that acoustic, which is one reason the instrument moved so easily from the English contest stage into American worship. The rehearsal room rarely shares those virtues. Carpet, acoustic ceiling tile and a closed door are what let a band practise the same four bars eleven times without the rest of the building hearing it.

Can one ringer cover more than two bells?

Normal ringing allows two bells at once, one in each hand, so a piece needing more notes forces technique. In four-in-hand the ringer holds two bells in one hand with the clappers at right angles, ringing the primary bell with a normal motion and the secondary with a knuckles-first knock, for four bells across both hands. Shelley ringing sets the two clappers in the same direction so they sound together with one movement, useful for octaves and separable by striking one bell sideways and the other forward. Three bells in a hand can be managed by a triple Shelley, by setting the third bell sideways, or by interlocked six-in-hand, where two handles are locked so their clappers travel together and a third bell is rotated and inserted between them. Bass and solo ringers use weaving, changing which bell is in each hand as the line requires, because four-in-hand with a heavy bass bell is impractical. Children who learn handbells through the Movement and Its Church tradition of graded classes meet these techniques in the same rooms where they meet everything else, on a Sunday morning, before the adults arrive.

Where the broadcast fits

Church music in downtown Waco has never stayed inside the walls. The Sermon and the Radio habit of carrying a service out to shut-ins and to listeners at home changed how a music room gets used, because a group that will be recorded rehearses for a microphone as well as a room, and a handbell decays in a way that a microphone hears differently from a pew. Publishers matter here too. Hope Publishing Company, The Lorenz Corporation and Alfred Music all print handbell music, alongside free scores from individual composers and arrangers, and most scores may not be duplicated, so each ringer needs a purchased copy rather than a photocopy. Shipping is a real cost because many scores exist only in hard copy. The shared score also follows a convention unlike any other ensemble: the C sharp above middle C and everything below it is written in bass clef, the D flat above middle C and everything above it in treble clef. Handbells speak an octave higher than written, so a middle C bell sounds C5, though some newer music asks for the octave lower when the bells accompany voices and a fuller sound would bury the singers.

The room you will not see on a tour

Ask about the bells and you will be shown the sanctuary, the stained glass and the bell tower. Ask where the Handbell choir rooms sit in a downtown Waco church and the answer is less picturesque: a classroom with foam-topped tables, a locked cabinet of cases, and a shelf that was cut to fit them. The next time you hear a handbell prelude, listen for the damping, the moment a ringer presses a vibrating bell against a shoulder to stop it, and consider the eleven rehearsals that happened in a plain room with the door shut.