The sound of a man or woman clapping: Clap, clap clap clap … Now, nowadays, you would say that clapping is the sound of applause. But I read somewhere that 3,000 years ago if you were attending a play in a theatre in Greece, everybody would clap for one reason, and that is to frighten away the demons who would otherwise interrupt the performance. I cannot remember the provenance so cannot verify this statement yet.
However, in the Bible in the Old Testament,
“All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: etcetera”
Demons are repelled by loud noises. Men would also beat drums or hammer on a piece of wood with wooden sticks (later known as a semantron and widely used for calling the faithful to prayer in the Eastern Orthodox church). They needed to be able to use bells, but in the Stone Age they did not have the means of making them.
During the latter part of the Stone Age, our ancestors
had started to melt copper along with gold and silver to make utensils, but these
were too soft.
Then metal-workers started to experiment and make alloys with different proportions of (mainly) copper, zinc and tin and produced brass and bronze: these were much harder and more durable alloys. Then, the Bronze Age had truly started – this was roughly 5,000 years ago in Anatolia or thereabouts. And Bronze gradually replaced stone as the main – hard - material for tools.
Manufacture of Bronze spread around the world: the Far East, Asia, India, China, Russia, South America, Europe and by about 4,000 years ago the period known as the Early Bronze Age had begun in the British Isles.
So, what did they make with this new material? Well, to start off with swords, spear heads and armour. Then onto pots, pans and cooking utensils. Then bracelets, amulets and decorative objects. Then, they started making bells and cymbals using full-scale foundries. And the manufacture of bells happened all over the world, it seemed that mankind everywhere needed an effective means of: one) frightening away the demons that assailed us and two) calling the faithful to prayer and religious services.
And bells have been in use ever since, all around the world for the two main purposes of scaring demons and spreading prayer. Metal is regarded as a powerful force to fight evil – witches are scared off by iron tools, bells are hung under eaves to frighten off evil spirits and iron objects placed around homes to protect residents and their infant children. Priests would have small, metal bells sewn onto their robes so that they would frighten off demons all the time they were in movement. Also, morris-dancers often have bells sewn onto leather gaiters strapped onto their shins – but that is definitely another story.
Bells have been part of human history – religious and social – for untold generations. Villages, for instance, were protected by the bell in their parish church, all the homes within the village would have been within earshot of that bell. Clustered around the parish church. And, even today, the sound of bells is ever-present. The chimes of bells to cheer births and baptisms, to celebrate weddings; also, the tolling of bells to mourn the dead. To celebrate victories and announce wars. Bells have been the loudest musical noise in our lives for countless generations.
In the 15th century, St Thomas Aquinas said that “the atmosphere is a battleground between angels and devils”. This belief was not just held by Christian Europeans, but all around the world; and it was strongly believed that the inscriptions carved into bells were effective as spells for GOOD and when the bell rang, its message would be sent in all directions to carry out its beneficial effects.
In 15th century Peking (now Beijing), there was a fifty-ton bell etched with numerous Buddhist verses to protect the citizens by virtue of its metal and its noise.
Interestingly, please allow me to digress slightly, the siege of Troy happened during the Bronze Age. This is one of the subjects that has inspired numerous Hollywood films over the years. The fighting armies are always shown as highly disciplined bodies armed with iron swords etcetera – another anachronism for my collection – most of the senior heroes and kings would have carried bronze swords and spears, but many warriors in both armies would have carried cudgels. When I read Homer’s Iliad, more of the heroes and warriors who died on the battlefield were killed by being bashed over the head with a rock or a stone than with a sword thrust. Similarly, in the Bible, Old Testament Judges chapter 15 verse 16 where Samson found the jawbone of an ass the easiest weapon to hand to smite a thousand Philistines.
The Iron Age itself started just over 3,000 years ago. Iron was an even harder metal than bronze and marked a great change not only in the development of tools but allowed foundries to manufacture much larger and more powerful bells for mankind to use.
Amazing how bells are part of our lives. What does “Ding, dong” mean to you? It could be many things – besides Alfred P Doolittle’s song in “My Fair Lady”.
“Ding, dong”, a chucklesome chortle from Leslie Phillips as he greets a lovely young lady for the first time and is rushing over to get to know her better and invite her to dinner;
Or “Ding, dong”, Avon calling;
Or “Ding, dong bell, pussy’s in the well”;
Or “Ding dong merrily on high” the very popular Christmas
carol.
Spells in the form of Inscriptions were used generally to
reinforce the sound of the bell ringing over the parish, and phrases such as:
“Through the sign of the Cross, let all evil flee” Were
used.
Popular on a number of bells is the following:
Vivos voco - mortuos plango - fulgura frango : I call the living (to prayer), mourn the dead, break the thunderbolt.
Then, being British, those who commissioned the bells
started to get the foundries to engrave the bells with their details and using
the Latin word “fecit” to indicate they made the bells - or paid for them.
St Nicholas Priory Church in Arundel currently has eight bells, all donated by the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, Henry Charles and Charlotte, in 1855. Manufactured by C & G Mears at their foundry in London and simply inscribed with details of the donors. Two of the bells are adorned with the magnificent seal of the Dukes of Norfolk.
Then, those who commissioned the bells started to promote themselves somewhat:
One at Bath Abbey leaves you absolutely certain of who
made the payment:
"All you of Bathe that heare me sound
Thank Lady Hopton’s Hundred Pound."
Then, the manufacturers had to point the finger at those
parishioners and villagers who did not contribute to the cost of their bell,
like this 1607 bell in Cambridgeshire:
"Of all the bells in Benet, I am the best
And yet for my casting, the parish paid the least."
And this one from Derbyshire:
"Mankind like me are often found
Possessed of naught but empty sound."
Did you know
there is a website called “The History of Bells”? No, neither did I until I started on this
article.
Anyway, looking
at the largest or heaviest bells ever created, these two come out top:
The biggest ever bell was cast in Rangoon in Burma (now Yangon in Myanmar) by order of King DHAMMAZEDI in 1484. It weighed 327 tons, a ton is 2,240 pounds weight and, in comparison, a bag of sugar weighs two pounds, so that is an unimaginable amount of sugar. Obviously, King Dhammazedi was no shrinking violet and intended the world to know just how powerful he was by commissioning this bell.
The bell was placed
in the Shwedagon Pagoda until Portuguese invaders seized it for loot. But the vessel they placed it on capsized, the
bell sank to the bottom of the river and has not seen daylight since.
So, if you have
access to a large ship, a mobile crane and a colossal amount of
counter-ballast, you might be able to raise it.
Good luck, but you might be disappointed with the sound, the only noise
they got from this bell when it was hit by a striker was a dull clonk. Not very impressive.
The next big bell is the Tsar Bell which is the largest and heaviest bell in Russia. It was cast in the 1730s for the Russian Empress Anna Ivanovna. The bell weighed more than 200 tons and was over twenty feet tall.
Whilst it was
nearing completion – in 1737 – a fire broke out in the Kremlin and its wooden
supports caught fire, the guards threw water over the fire causing the bell to
start cracking and one section weighing eleven tons fell off. Some years later, the bell was placed on a
stone pedestal and in 1836 services were held inside it, as a chapel.
The heaviest working bell in Great Britain is ‘Great Paul’ which hangs in St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. This great bell was cast in 1881 and weighs a mere 17 tons, it has a diameter of 9 feet 6 inches and (unlike the Dhammazedi and Tsar bells) it rings and is tuned to E-flat.
The next – and most well-known bell – is Big Ben in the clocktower of the Palace of Westminster. According to the Houses of Parliament website there are four other bells hanging there to make a peal of five.
Big Ben weighs
13 tons and fourteen cwt (hundredweight);
The first
quarter bell weighs 1 ton and 2 cwt; the second bell weighs 1 ton and 6 cwt;
the third bell weighs 1 ton and 14 cwt and the fourth bell weighs 4 tons.
That’s a lot of
heavy iron!
Just a second, I’ve got to check my watch. Oh, just coming up to the hour. Shall we listen to the strokes now and I will resume in a few moments …
That was nice, wasn’t it? Oh, you were expecting to hear Big Ben. Never mind, there are lots of peals in
churches and grandfather clocks all over the country ringing the “Westminster
Quarters” – NOT “Westminster Chimes”.
This one was made by the Howard Miller family of clockmakers and I very
much appreciate them making this recording available.
The tower that
Big Ben (and the other bells) are in was simply called the Clock Tower until
2012 when it was renamed Elizabeth Tower to mark the late Queen’s Diamond
Jubilee. The clock and its face were
recently refurbished and re-opened to great fanfare in 2022. But it has stopped a couple of times in May
this year – although it should be alright now …
As I mentioned, the tune played over the four quarters of the hour is called “Westminster Quarters” and it contains only four notes and these are G sharp, F sharp, E and B. The hour tones are chimed by Big Ben – tuned to E.
The tune was originally called “Cambridge Quarters” because it was written in 1793 for Great St Mary’s Church in Cambridge. There is some confusion over who exactly wrote the tune. But it was adopted by the Palace of Westminster in 1859.
Big Ben, the bell itself was cast in 1858 but sometime in 1859, it cracked in situ and could not be repaired, so it was rotated by 90 degrees and a smaller striker was used from then on as the bell continued to give a good tone. Also, the tune was given words originally and these are (I promise not to sing them):
"All through this hour
Lord be my guide
And by Thy power
No foot shall slide"
I feel it would be
nice to re-introduce the words and have them sung by a small choir of MPs and Lords
standing outside the Elizabeth Tower every quarter of an hour throughout the
day and night to the music of the bells playing above them. That would certainly keep them busy!
The bell is the
largest musical instrument that has been created by mankind. Some might argue that some church and
cathedral organs are larger, but very few of them are larger than bells. It is interesting that most bells and organs
are installed in churches and cathedrals.
Mind you, the ringing of a bell is, very much, an open-air sound and the
noise travels much further than an organ’s notes.
So, all the
villagers, towns-people and city-dwellers who live and work within range of the
sound of “their” bell or bells can appreciate the musicality and protection
that they provide.
But it is the
sound, the noise, the musical note that the bell produces that is significant
(sonically). Listen to the jangling
sound of a small hand-bell and there is just one simple note that is being
produced. But, listen to the sound of a
large church bell from close proximity, but not too close, and you hear a much
more complex sound. There is a
reverberation of sound and you can hear a number of different notes all at the
same time, this seems to be more so with the larger and heavier bells as there
is more metal in the construction to generate the dominant note and sub-notes.
Even though many
orchestras nowadays contain tubular bells – and anvils – within their battery
of instruments, composers over the years have attempted to re-create the sound
of bells by using other instruments (and human voices). In my opinion, Claude Debussy came among the
closest with one of his solo piano preludes: La Cathedrale Engloutie (the
sunken cathedral) dated 1910. I am not a
musician, but I think that his use of the loud pedal on the piano, opens all
the strings and allows them to vibrate along with the ones being struck
generating a wonderfully rich but gentle sound to wash over the listener,
hearing the cathedral’s organ and bells as it sinks again beneath the
waves. In my opinion, Debussy really
captures the reverberations of a heavy church bell – also the sound which
resonates all around.
What each of us hears is often different, so what one person finds musical, another might find cacophonous. So, I am perfectly comfortable if you do not agree with me and find another composer’s work captures the essence of the bell more intimately for your hearing.
One thing about bell ringing that is peculiar to Great Britain is change ringing. I am not going to go into any detail here as this is such a large and complex subject for this article. But the teams of bell-ringers in their towers use a system of ringing the bells in different sequences for different purposes and services: baptisms, weddings and funerals for instance. Not only do they declare the function of the peal, but they use specific patterns to weave a magical tapestry of sound both mathematical and musical where all the bells are used equally.
The loudest ever piece of music specifically written for bells was created in 2010 to 2011 by the British composer and conductor: Charles Hazlewood. He found that there was only one place in the country that had three working church peals in fairly close proximity and this was in the university city of Cambridge. The churches were Great St Mary’s (yes, that one again) – the University Church, St Edward’s the King and Martyr Parish Church and St Andrew the Great Parish Church. Unfortunately, the bells of each church were tuned differently. Which did cause Charles problems. He solved these by bringing in teams of hand-bell ringers, thirty-plus in all from teams across Eastern England. And, he re-designed the ringing process in one of the churches so that the bells remained static in place and the clappers were pulled by the ringing team.
He scored an arrangement of “Greensleeves” (appropriately, because of King Henry VIII’s association with Cambridge Colleges) for the bells of three churches and a corps of hand-bell ringers and this was performed in 2011 to the assembled citizens of Cambridge in the Market Square as a one-off outdoor musical experiment.
I personally find the sound of church or cathedral bells wonderful to listen to, but I do appreciate that it may not be to everybody’s taste and sometimes the sound is not too appropriate. One example occurred in a church in Somerset that I knew.
St Mary Magdalene Church is on Hammet Street in Taunton, Somerset. It has a peal of fifteen bells in total. It also has a carillon – a mechanical device using the same concept as a player piano – to play a tune on the bells. In this case, it played the tune for the song: “Oh, we come up from Somerset where the cider apples grow”. So far, so good, but it played and repeated this tune every hour for the number of times that a single bell would strike on the hour in most churches. This could be very irritating for people who lived close to the church or worked in offices or shops close by – particularly at mid-day. We lived on the edge of the town so were not badly affected. I do not know whether they had many complaints over time, but now the carillon only operates four times a day: 9 o’clock in the morning, 12 noon, and 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock in the afternoon. Which, I suppose, is a reasonably happy balance for all concerned.
My father worked in the textile industry for many
years. Then he was called to be a Church
of England vicar and chaplain. He
trained for the priesthood in a Benedictine monastery in Yorkshire. The students there (each for two or three
years) lived there as monks and took part in all the tasks and services of
monastic life as well as their studies in preparation for their vocation. This included the eight chapel services of
the monastic day from matins (just after midnight) right through to compline
(at 9 o’clock in the evening). They were
all called throughout the day to chapel services and their duties by hand-bells
ringing across the monastery.
My father, having a very good bass voice, was part of the
three-strong team who led the singing in the chapel. Now, the services in chapel would all take
place at their appointed hours, but one service in the year - on Easter Day - was
timed almost to the second. This was
Prime (about 6 o’clock in the morning).
A table would be set up outside the chapel piled high with hand-bells
and cymbals. As the Prior, the monks,
the novices and the students were called into chapel for Prime, they would each
pick up a bell or a cymbal and would quietly carry it in with them. As they were singing one particular psalm,
instead of singing the last two verses, EVERYBODY would ring their bells with
great clamour and gusto. Now, and this
is the reason for the timing of this service, at exactly this point, the sun
would rise above the horizon, the East window above the High Altar would be
illuminated and the chapel would be flooded with LIGHT as the brethren of the
Community of the Resurrection WELCOMED the RISEN LORD back to His world and
kingdom.
What a glorious start to Easter Day!
You would think that with all the noise being made all
around the world by all these bells that the demons would not be running like
the clappers, but would have bought themselves a good set of ear defenders by
now – obviously not!
I am going to finish this article by sending a prayer to
YOU through the medium of a bell. The
prayer was written last year by my uncle and I am holding a copy in my hand
whilst tightly holding my bell and through THIS recording I am passing on this
prayer and the blessing of the ringing of this bell to you.
Bless us all this day.
Ting Ting Ting Ting.
Excellent listening:
“The Listening Service” – BBC Radio
3 – Tom Service edition “The Bells, the Bells.”
Reading:
David Hendy “Noise – A Human History of Sound & Listening” Profile Books – 2013.
Websites:
List
of Heaviest and Largest Bells (historyofbells.com)
A brief history of Big Ben and Elizabeth Tower - UK Parliament
Arundel, St Nicholas - The Bells of Sussex - THE BELLS OF SUSSEX (weebly.com)
