Campanology

Campanology (/kæmpəˈnɒlədʒi/) is both the scientific and artistic study of bells, encompassing their design, tuning, and the methods by which they are rung.

It delves into the technology behind bell casting and tuning, as well as the rich history, traditions, and techniques of bellringing as an art form.

These unique assemblages come with distinct practices and challenges, and campanology also explores the composition and performance of music written specifically for them.

Instead, the term is most commonly associated with the use of large bells, their musical and historical significance, and the ongoing efforts to perfect these instruments.

Between strokes, it briefly sits poised 'upside-down', with the mouth pointed upwards; pulling on a rope connected to a large diameter wheel attached to the bell swings it down and the assembly's own momentum propels the bell back up again on the other side of the swing.

At East Bergholt in the English county of Suffolk, there is a unique set of bells that are not in a tower and are rung full circle by hand.

Furthermore, the great inertias involved mean that a ringer has only a limited ability to retard or accelerate their bell's cycle.

Instead, a system of change ringing evolved, particularly in the early seventeenth century, which centres on mathematical permutations.

Ordinarily a bell will swing through a small arc only at a set speed governed by its size and shape in the nature of a simple pendulum, but by swinging through a larger arc approaching a full circle, control of the strike interval can be exercised by the ringer.

The considerable weights of full-circle tower bells also means they cannot be easily stopped or started and the practical change of interval between successive strikes is limited.

In method or scientific ringing each ringer has memorized a pattern describing his or her bell's course from row to row; taken together, these patterns (along with only occasional calls made by a conductor) form an algorithm which cycles through the various available permutations dictated by the number of bells available.

Better-known examples such as Plain Bob, Reverse Canterbury, Grandsire and Double Oxford are familiar to most ringers.

Today change ringing remains most popular in England but is practiced worldwide; over four thousand peals are rung each year.

Dorothy L. Sayers's mystery novel The Nine Tailors (1934) centres around change ringing of bells in a Fenland church; her father was a clergyman.

[citation needed] A carillon is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 bells.

The bells are cast in bronze, hung in fixed suspension, and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniously together.

The bells of a carillon may be directly exposed to the elements or hidden inside the structure of their tower.

The Ellacombe apparatus is an English mechanism devised for chiming by striking stationary bells with external hammers.

Bellfounding is the casting and tuning of large bronze bells in a foundry for use such as in churches, clock towers and public buildings, either to signify the time or an event, or as a musical carillon or chime.

In Britain, archaeological excavations have revealed traces of furnaces, showing that bells were often cast on site in pits in a church or its grounds.

This is what Fuller-Maitland writing in Grove's dictionary of music and musicians meant when he said : "Good tone means that a bell must be in tune with itself.

The relative depth of the "bowl" or "cup" part of the bell also determines the number and strength of the partials in order to achieve a desired timbre.

The scaling or size of most bells to each other may be approximated by the equation for circular cylinders: f=Ch/D2 where h is thickness, D is diameter, and C is a constant determined by the material and the profile.

[11] On the theory that pieces in major keys may better be accommodated, after many unsatisfactory attempts, in the 1980s, using computer modeling for assistance in design by scientists at the Technical University in Eindhoven, bells with a major-third profile were created by the Royal Eijsbouts bell foundry in the Netherlands,[10] being described as resembling old Coke bottles[14] in that they have a bulge around the middle;[15] and in 1999 a design without the bulge was announced.

A bell
Change ringing in a church in Devon , England
The bells of St Bees Priory , England shown in the "up" position. When being rung they swing through a full circle from mouth upwards round to mouth upwards, and then back again.
This is a diagram of one type of method ringing. Each bell strikes once in every sequence, or change, and repetition is avoided. Here 1 is the highest-pitched, and 6 is the lowest
The bell chamber in the campanile of San Massimo, Verona
Peal board at St Peter and St Paul Church, Chatteris , Cambridgeshire, commemorating the ringing of a peal in 1910; 5,040 changes were rung in two hours and forty-nine minutes.
Bell-ringer demonstrating Russian chiming on a portable belfry
A man plays a carillon's wooden keyboard with his fists.
A carillonneur plays the 56-bell carillon of the Plummer Building , Rochester, Minnesota , US
A steel structure containing 56 hanging bells of various sizes and topped with a roof spire and a cross
The 56-bell carillon of Saint Joseph's Oratory , Montreal, Quebec , Canada [ 6 ]
Eight-bell chime in its frame ( McShane Bell Foundry , Maryland). Note that the bottom bells are static-chimes, and the top bell is also hung for swing-chiming on its own.
Ellacombe apparatus for six bells
The harmonics produced by Erfurt bell (1497) [ 8 ] or any well-tuned bell: [ 9 ] strike note on E with hum note, minor third, fifth, octave or nominal, and major third and perfect fifth in the second octave.
Spectrum of a Winchester Cathedral bell as analyzed by Jonathan Harvey using FFT . [ 12 ] "The bell produces a secondary pitch (f') which lies outside that 'inharmonic series though it is clearly audible when the bell is struck, 'to curiously thrilling and disturbing effect.'" [ 13 ] Play approximation ⓘ The strike tone is middle C , the hum tone an octave below.