Substitute choir member chimes in about the joy of handbell ringing

Ringing handbells requires skill, humor and, ideally, three hands.

By ROSEMARY PONNEKANTI

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

TACOMA, Wash. — I’ve played a lot of odd instruments in my life. Bagpipes, tin whistle, bassoon, viol da gamba, and the one I play best, double bass.

But handbells? No. I’d seen bell choirs perform, and it always sounded so festive. So when the idea came up to try it out, I was all for it. After all, I thought, I can read music, I’ve played in professional orchestras. I can do this.

One freezing November night, then, saw me climbing the stairs to the choir loft at Tacoma, Wash.’s Bethlehem Lutheran Church, where the Rainier Ringers keep their bells. Usually, bell-ringing is a serious art whose practitioners rehearse loyally every week. Luckily for me, one of the Rainiers is sick, and director Doug Mjorud kindly lets me stand in.

Mjorud directs me to the back row of bigger bells and finds me some gloves (to protect the shine). I smile nervously to my next-door ringer Candy Calloway and survey my instruments. Four bells, in around middle-C position: B-flat, B natural, C and C-sharp. OK, I thought. Four notes. For someone who’s played Mahler symphonies, how hard can that be?

Very, very hard.

For starters, you don’t just read the notes, waiting until one of yours happens to pop up. You also read the arcane symbols above or below them telling you just how to play your bell. You think you just ring a bell? No, no, no, no. You ring-touch it (damp it onto your chest), thumb damp it, swing it behind you, shake it in front, whack it on the table, hit it with a mallet, or even pick up the choir chime nearby and ring that instead. And with the nerdy glee reserved for niche composers, bell-choir arrangers delight in filling every blank note with these instructions.

Halfway into “West Indies Carol,” then, and I’m floundering, furiously criss-crossing my hands in an attempt to reach the next bell and scattering chimes and mallets everywhere.

In the beginning

English handbell ringing began with change-ringers, those masochistic English folk who climb up cold towers to pull bell ropes in endless mathematical permutations. Around the 17th century, some bright spark realized that the handbells used by cowherds could be cast in a musical scale and used for change practice somewhere much warmer, without stairs.

Ringers began playing tunes, foundries cast more bells. The idea was brought to Massachusetts in 1902, and the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers now numbers nearly 200 choirs nationally and internationally.

Seattle’s major choirs are Bells of the Sound and Emerald City Ringers; Tacoma has the Rainier Ringers and Chapel Ringers, plus choirs at Bethlehem Lutheran and Little Church on the Prairie.

Most big choirs now have around seven or eight chromatic octaves of bells — the range of a grand piano — needing around 14 people to play. It’s a team sport, where fast runs are split between several people and even one absence or poor player stands out like a sore thumb.

That’s me.

As we launch into a Christmas medley, I relax a little and even sing along — until I realize that the B I’ve been belting out should, in fact, have been B-flat for quite a while. Before I can fix it, Mjorud moves on to “Up on the Housetop,” a crazy mix of mallets and table strikes punctuated by crashes and muffled profanities as I drop bells on each other. Where is my third hand when I need it?

In the break, I meet the rest of the Rainiers, who are politely not mentioning the appalling sounds coming from my direction. In the 15-year-old choir, there’s a wide mix of ages, professions and experience. Calloway, next to me, has been playing only a year, and didn’t even read music before that. I’m awed.

“I began with just one bell, for two months,” she explains, “then added more.” She color-codes her music for each bell’s part, and asks for help often. “I love music,” she says, “and this lets me play it.”

It’s fun!

Back in again, and I’m seizing bells, whacking them down, swapping them from hand to hand while trying to turn pages with slippery gloves, and frantically writing notes for this story whenever the music stops. But you know something? It’s a blast. It’s challenging, it’s teamwork, and the joyous chime of the bells swirls around your head.

So when Mjorud calls me up the next week to ask if I can sub again, I jump right in. This time, I’m on the small, high-pitched bells. Gulp. My neighbor Anastacia Lingenfelter whisks me through the basics of holding two bells in each hand so they don’t both ring together or, alternately, so they do. (Sometimes you need to play simultaneous octaves, or bells eight notes apart, for a really brilliant effect.) Then we’re off.

My bells are G, G-sharp and A, plus the occasional A-sharp. After practicing a little, I decide I’m too chicken to pick up those octave bells. Just as I’m getting the hang of “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Mjorud asks if we can please sing the dooby-dooby-doo bit, as it’s not working with bells. Sing? Good grief, haven’t I got enough to do?

Then there’s the climax: “Trepak” from “The Nutcracker.” I have the first notes of the theme — in octaves. Taking a deep breath, I pick up all four bells in the split-second rest, and ring out. It works! It sounds great! Everyone claps, and I feel that adrenaline rush of achievement.

Unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t allow for loyal weekly rehearsals. But, Doug, if anyone gets sick, I’m waiting by the phone.