On 30 October 2009, about 50 English bell-ringers coming from London, Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and other counties of Great Britain visited Roncobello (Bergamo-Italy) and met some representatives of the local Bell Ringer School (Scuola Campanaria di Roncobello). The planning of this meeting started last year and was aimed at strenghtening friendship, exchanging views and opinions about the bell-ringing tradition in Europe and planning common schemes for the future.

The meeting was indeed very productive, being a proof that it is possible to make music and friends even though two different languages are spoken and people come from different environments and walks of life. The idea that different peoples of Europe can meet and share common routes is becoming real and has managed to get to the remotest areas of our mountain valleys. This year Roncobello has welcomed bell-ringers and folk dancers from Sardinia and England, promoting twinnings not because of parental ties between some relatives living in Italy and others abroad, but because of the positive action of the media, notably Internet, which is able to get in contact people sharing common musical and cultural interests although living in different areas of Europe.

Roncobello-English Bell Ringers twinning was marked by two events. The first event was in the afternoon, when English bell-ringers were welcomed to the church and to the bell-tower, being shown the typical ringing system of Bergamo with some carillon tunes performed by Roncobello school pupils and later some change ringing.

The second event was after supper, with a handbell concert in St. Peter and Paul church at 9 pm. The night concert was preceeded by a charming ring on behalf of the English ringers on a very peculiar mobile belfry, called ‘mini ring’, with a complete ring of six small bells tuned to C major. In order to illustrate the Italian bell-ringers the most interesting features of the typical English ringing system, Stephen Pettman and his friends erected the mini ring during the afternoon and gave the audience a unique opportunity to see how English ringers celebrate holidays in their towns and villages. The peculiar English ringing system appears to be one of the most complete in Europe, deeply influenced – as it was for Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach in Germany – by mathematical patterns and probably indebted to the great school of scientists and mathematicians (i.e. Francis Bacon and John Locke) which developed in England and the rest of Europe during that age.

Roncobello and English handbell-ringers concert gave the audience the opportunity to compare two different hanbell-ringing systems which share many common aspects, though: firstly, possessing and using instruments that imitate the sound of real bells; secondly, using small bells as a mean to practice music generally perfomed on real bells; thirdly, having built a repertoire composed of tunes arranged to be rung on handbells; having managed to create an effective team-work so as to manage to ring the handbells as an orchestra.

The concert was opened by Scuola Campanaria with four Christmas tunes (La Bergamasca, Joy to the World, Piva and Pastorale di Leffe). Then followed a real exquisite show of English bell-ringers. A first group performed Grandfather’s Clock and Ode to Joy conducted by Richard Wilson. The second group composed of ringers coming from Essex and London performed two different pieces, the second one being notably ‘Grandsire’, one of the most ancient complete tunes for bells dating back to mid XVII century. Then the English ringers dedicated to Roncobello a tune specially composed for the occasion and called ‘Roncobello Place Minor’ on six bells.

Roncobello Place Minor was followed by a spectacular sequence of Christmas Carols performed by the Cardinal Ringers, a very experienced duet composed by James Hollins and his daughter Genna Mohammed. The audience was delighted at listening to Jingle Bells, Hard the Herald Angels Sing!, O Little Town of Bethlehem, O Come All Ye Faithful, Good King Wenceslas. It was really emotional hearing the audience joining the ringers to sing the last two songs. Christmastime was already in the air.

The concert was ended by Roncobello Ringers who performed four more tunes, including a foxtrot , a polka and two religious tunes (Solemn March and Your Sweetest Name), accompanied by organist Ann Little who played a recently restored Serassi organ dating back to the beginning of the XIX century.

At the end of the concert Roncobello and English Ringers exchanged gifts. Roncobello Ringers offered two baskets with Italian food delicacies whereas English Ringers brought a lovely fruit bowl and a jar engraved with a phrase: ‘Amicizia attraverso le campane’ (‘Friendship through Bells’). Roncobello Ringers also received several cds with good recordings of Grundisburgh bells (one of them even containing ‘Roncobello Place Minor’), calendars, books on Suffolk lanscapes and many other gifts we are going to keep in our school for display for visitors. We regard all there gestures as a very important message meaning the intention to create a very important network of musical plans and experiences in order to develop the interest for the bell-ringing tradition across Europe.

Italian journalist Diego Giuliani, who came from Rome just for the coverage of the event for German radio network WDR, praised the effort we have been making for many years to save and preserve the bell ringing tradition in England and Lombardy.

I would thank Stephen Pettman for his inexhaustible energy in planning trips with lively parties of bell-ringers. My gratitude is for all the bell ringers I had the chance to meet and talk to and share opinions about the future of bells, the problems of bell automation, old and new bells, good and bad bells. In short, we departed knowing that it will be pleasure to meet again and live new experiences together.

I am also grateful to Genna for flying from England to join our concert. Her effort to support her father James was heartly appreciated as well as we were deeply moved by the peculiar and fascinating sound of the handbells produced by all the ringers in our elegant church.

Our experience can be regarded as a milestone for planning future international events to keep alive and display the different aspects of the European bell-ringing tradition. A European convention of bell-ringers to take place in Spain or Sardinia next year or in two years’ time involving Bergamo, English, Sardinian and Spanish ringers will be possibly planned in the next few months. This new meeting would be an unprecedented way for us to meet ringers from different areas of Europe who share the idea of maintaining links to the historical musical treasures of their respective lands.

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The Art of Bell-Ringing in Bergamo Valleys

The sound of bells has always impressed classical and opera composers. Pietro Mascagni opens his ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ with the echo of two bells that celebrate Easter. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini was very fond of the six bells of San Carlo Church in Milan, at a stone’s throw from Teatro alla Scala. Bargecchia bells were very familiar to Giacomo Puccini, who inserted their sound in ‘Tosca’. Finally, Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ include a typical five bell tune in the second movement of ‘Winter’, possibily inspired by some popular melody of his time. Bell ringing activity became very popular in Italy during the 19th century, just when people’s love for opera was spreading across the country and at all social levels. Notably, between 1750 and 1900 bell and handbell ringers produced a relevant repertoire in Bergamo valleys – a picturesque town at 50 kilometers north-east of Milan home to Gaetano Donizetti – producing an extensive series of ‘carillon’ tunes and sets of changes which differed as to stile from place to place.

The aim of this CD is to shed light on a musical treausure little known in Italy and abroad, which, nonetheless, is worth discovering and studying for its relationship with classical music. Tune ringing repertoire links the sacred and the profane. In fact, carillon tunes used to be and still are rung on the keyboards set in the belfry only on religious holidays, but the melodies played have been clearly forged in local inns, where ringers would meet to practise the tunes they had learnt from their forefathers. People used to sing Verdi’s and Donizetti’s arias even though they were not professional singers. In Bergamo, besides singing popular arias, folk musicians would perform ‘sonatas’ on their ‘campanine’, which were popular xylophones made of glass and metal bars whose sound is supposed to imitate music boxes. Between the 19th and the 20th century, campanine ringers composed more than five hundred sonatas derived from popular songs, marches, polkas, mazurkas, waltzes, as well as ancient dances such as scotish and monferrina. Campanine players were often joined by guitar and mandolin players, accordionists and bagpipers. Therefore, bell ringing (including both change ringing and carillon tunes) and Italian handbell ringing tunes on campanine have been collected in this CD with the aim of inviting our listeners to imagine what kind of music the Italian composers used to hear while strolling along the streets of their villages and towns or going to church for service or simply getting out for public meetings.

In 1750 Bergamo bell founders started to cast complete rings of five up to ten bells. Since then, bells have been intended not only as a mean to call parishioners to church but also as a proper musical instrument. Such a change was probably due to the cultural influence of French and Belgian merchants who would travel to Bergamo to trade textile products. In France and Belgium the first rudimental carillons date back to 1510, with a complete ring of 17 bells in Malines. Right from the start, carillon tunes in Bergamo have sounded different from the ones performed abroad because their sources were essentially popular and oral, with no written scores. Priests have never rejected the idea that popular tunes should be rung on the towers, the only religious tunes being few Marian songs and Christmas’ Carols. So far as today, carillon tunes have never been rung for non religious events. Between the 19th and the 20th century, each parish used to compete with the others to cast bigger and bigger rings of bells, even though their weight and size was not always matched by fair quality.

In 1942, during World War II, Benito Mussolini decided to take the biggest bells off the  towers and use its bronze to cast new weapons. Such a decision pushed many parishioners to rebellion, above all in the small villages of the countryside and in the mountains, where people had made huge efforts in the previous decades to collect money to cast bells. Many bells were taken off the towers by parishioners themselves overnight and hidden underground or in stables, covered by hay, before the arrival of the fascist soldiers who were supposed to remove definitely the bells. When the war ended, the new Transport Minister refunded the parishes affected by Mussolini’s decree to give financial support for casting new bells. Yet, the most serious damage for bell ringing tradition was the automation of bells. Ropes and keyboards were taken off by bell hangers and replaced by engines to swing the bells and by automatic hammers to perform carillon tunes. Poor quality automation and lack of control on hangers’ work caused enormous losses: first, many ringers were ‘pensioned off’ regardless their voluntary service of bell ringing; secondly, the art of peal ringing and carillon ringing began to fade away from old ringers’ memory because of lack of practice. Thanks to on-field based research carried out by folk music experts and due to official decrees specially made by the Diocese of Bergamo, a good part of this musical treasure has been saved and is being revived by new bands of young ringers along with a very strict control on bell restoration.

Scuola Campanaria di Roncobello (Roncobello Bell Ringing School) was founded in 2000 with the aim of preserving the traditional bell ringing style of Bergamo and providing youngsters with skills to ring bells and Italian handbells. Since its foundation, school teaching has proved so successful that it was decided to put up a band of young ringers to study the most interesting tunes recorded from old ringers and offer them to the audience in concert. Between 2000 and 2008 the group gave 150 concerts in the Italian churches, theatres and open spaces (squares, festivals, fairs). In 2001 Roncobello School joined the International Folk Festival of Suisio (Bergamo). In 2005 it rang for Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano on the inauguration of a 17th century restored mill at Roncobello. In 2006 the band rang on the inaguration of the restored wooden bell frame of Lenna (Bergamo) and was invited by Bergamo Rotary Club for a Christmas Concert. On 14th September 2008 Roncobello School rang the bells of several church towers of Milan with Federazione Campanari Bergamaschi for MITO International Music Festival of Milan. On that occasion, 1500 people listened such an unusual concert from Duomo terraces. On 26th July 2008 Scuola Campanaria visited English Suffolk ringers and performed at Grundisburgh. So far four compact discs have been produced in cooperation with Federazione Campanari Bergamaschi, whose membership has proved essential for its development. Its repertoire spans from religious melodies to traditional tunes, all of which result from a careful analysis of our collected musical matter: interviews to old ringers, transcription and analysis of the different ringing styles of Bergamo valleys. All the repertoire is taught and learnt orally.

Bergamo change ringing system

In our ringing system all the bells produce melodies according to mathematical patterns. According to tradition, when bells 1 and 2 are called, bells 3 and 4 start swinging when 1 and 2 sound. At this point, bell 5 starts swinging when 3 sounds and 6 starts swinging when 4 sounds. Bell 7 starts swinging when 5 sounds and bell 8 starts swinging when 6 sounds. The aim of this ringing system is to produce chords made by two bells ringing at the same time.

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1. A Night with English Bell Ringers in Roncobello

Last year on one of my regular tips to Northern Italy, we were treated to a display of the various aspects of  traditional ringing in the Ambrosian system at Roncobello near Bergamo. This consisted of three aspects: (1) full circle ringing but with only one controllable stroke and about 80% counterbalance! (2) melodies on the eight bells, played with a carillon keyboard situated amongst the bells, and (3) a concert of traditional bell music played on campanine, a type of glockenspiel but with tubes instead of plates. This was all the more impressive as the Scuola was formed to try to maintain traditional ringing in the area and thereby stave off electrification. The Scuola consists of 20+ young ringers, aged between 6 and 18 led by Luca Fiocchi, a teacher.

 

As I always do when in Italy, I invited them to Suffolk to see English ringing. I was very pleased when Luca contacted me and said they proposed to come in July – 18 youngsters and 13 accompanying adults. A bit of a headache getting suitable accommodation in peak season but eventually successful. We decided that a coach was the best option for transport and agreed a timetable, which included to my pleasant surprise a concert of their campanine and other instruments.

They arrived on Wednesday 23 July and were taken direct to Lavenham, one of Suffolk’s most famous towers to hear an old style ring. After sightseeing, a further demonstration at Ipswich on the modern twelve. A barbecue at my house completed the day, before retiring to their hotel. Thursday saw a day’s sightseeing in London, followed by Fish and Chips back in Felixstowe. On Friday, a chance for hands on try of English bells at Orford, followed by a visit to the castle. A look at Woodbridge, a meal and then the concert at Grundisburgh. Well received by everyone including the organist, John Cooper, father of Tina Sanderson. Farewells on the Saturday, back to the airport via Cambridge.

My thanks to all the local ringers who helped, particularly Richard and Sarah Moody at Orford. Hopefully we will see them again, possibly in smaller numbers, for a more serious try at our system.

Stephen D Pettman

[from http://www.suffolkbells.org.uk]

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