BELL-RINGING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 75, 29 November 1940, Page 19

BELL-RINGING

Sir,-In this country, music lovers cannot enjoy the pleasure of listening to music from church bells, as at Home, for our churches have not the peals necessary. New peals and tunes for important occasions are practised on hand bells before being performed on the church bells by rope and wheel. Is there a peal of hand-bells in New Zealand? Such a peal with its wider range of notes, would be even more efficient for broadcasting than church bells. There must be lots of ex-bell ringers and some ex-carillonneurs in our towns who, if organised, could use their knowledge of this very ancient craft to supply music of a unique kind that would be welcomed over the wireless by @t least everyone who had appreciated music from bells at Home.

England is the home of bell music. An Englishman reacts to "A Full Peal of Grandsire Triples," or "A Peal of Kent Treble Bob Major" as he does to his National songs. What music could be more joyous than the full peals from the belfry (free to all) which are heard on auspicious occasions, or on the other hand, more heart-rending than a muffled peal? Of all the things we Homies miss in a new country, we miss most the music of church bells, so much so that the writer has often seen tears shed by the new immigrant at the profound disappointment on the realisation that there were no peals of bells to be heard on their first Sunday after arrival. May I suggest that ex-bell ringers, ex-carillonneurs and others interested, get together and form hand-bell-ringing associations in large centres, with a view to broadcast programmes, The writer is quite ignorant as to whether programmes of music from bells are recorded in England for export or not, but he is quite certain that music-loving listeners would be both delighted and thrilled to hear a programme of musical masterpieces on bells. -Ex-member of the North Lincolnshire Bell Ringers’ Association (Ahipara).