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. This field often involves the study of large, tuned bell collections, such as Flemish carillons, Russian zvons, or English "rings of bells" used for change ringing. These unique assemblages come with distinct practices and challenges, and campanology also explores the composition and performance of music written specifically for them.
While campanology primarily refers to larger bells typically housed in towers, it is not usually applied to smaller bell collections, such as glockenspiels, tubular bells, or Indonesian gamelans. 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.
Campanology is ahybrid word. The first half is derived from theLate Latincampana, meaning 'bell'; the second half is derived from theAncient Greek-λογία (-logia) meaning 'the study of'.[1]
Acampanologist is one who studies campanology, though it is popularly misused to refer to abell ringer.[2]
In English style (see below)full circle ringing, the bells in a church tower are hung so that on each stroke the bell swings through a complete circle; actually a little more than 360 degrees. 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. Each alternate pull or stroke is identified as eitherhandstroke orbackstroke—handstroke where the "sally" (the fluffy area covered with wool) is pulled followed by a pull on the plain "tail". AtEast Bergholt in the English county ofSuffolk, there is a unique set of bells that are not in a tower and are rung full circle by hand.[3] They are the heaviest ring of five bells listed inDove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers.[4] The heaviest bell is 26 long cwt 0 qr 8 lb (2,920 lb or 1,324 kg) and the bells have a combined weight of 4 long tons 5 cwt 2 qr 24 lb (9,600 lb or 4.354 t).
Theserings of bells have relatively few bells, compared with a carillon; six or eight-bell towers are common, with the largest rings numbering up to sixteen bells. The bells are usually tuned to adiatonic scale withoutchromatic notes; they are traditionally numbered from the top downwards so that the highest bell (called thetreble) is numbered 1 and the lowest bell (thetenor) has the highest number; it is usually thetonic note of the bells' scale.
To swing the heavy bells requires a ringer for each bell. Furthermore, the greatinertias involved mean that a ringer has only a limited ability to retard or accelerate their bell's cycle. Along with the relatively limited palette of notes available, the upshot is that such rings of bells do not easily lend themselves to ringingmelodies.
Instead, a system ofchange ringing evolved, particularly in the early seventeenth century, which centres onmathematicalpermutations. The ringers begin withrounds, which is simply ringing down the scale in numerical order. (On six bells this would be123456.) The ringing then proceeds in a series ofrows orchanges, each of which is some permutation of rounds (for example214365) where no bell changes by more than one position from the preceding row (this is also known as theSteinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm).
Incall change ringing, one of the ringers (known as theConductor) calls out to tell the other ringers how to vary their order. The timing of the calls and changes of pattern accompanying them are made at the discretion of the Conductor and so do not necessarily involve a change of ringing sequence at each successive stroke as is characteristic ofmethod ringing. Some ringers, notably in the West of England where there is a strong call-change tradition, ring call changes exclusively but for others, the essence of change ringing is the substantially different method ringing. As of 2025 there are 7,255 English style rings. Wales having 230, Scotland 25, and the island of Ireland 61. The Channel Islands has 13 and the Isle of Man 2. 7 in Mainland Europe, 60 in North America, 2 in the Caribbean, 13 in Africa. Australia 72 and New Zealand 11. The remaining 6759 (93%) are in England (including several mobile rings).[5]
Change ringing originated following the invention of Englishfull-circle tower bell ringing in the early 17th century, whenbell ringers found that swinging a bell through a much larger arc than that required for swing-chiming gave control over the time between successive strikes of the clapper. 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. This culminated in the technique of full circle ringing, which enabled ringers to independently change the speeds of their individual bells accurately to combine in ringing different mathematical permutations, known as "changes".
Speed control of a tower bell is exerted by the ringer only when each bell is mouth upwards and moving slowly near the balance point; this constraint and the intricate rope manipulation involved normally requires that each bell have its own 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. This places limitations on the rules for generating easily-rung changes; each bell must strike once in each change, but its position of striking in successive changes can only change by one place.
Change ringing is practised worldwide, but it is by far most common onchurch bells in English churches, where it first developed.
Change ringing is also performed onhandbells, where conventionally each ringer holds two bells, and chimed oncarillons and chimes of bells, though these are more commonly used to play conventional melodies.Inmethod orscientific 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 occasionalcalls made by a conductor) form analgorithm which cycles through the various available permutations dictated by the number of bells available. There are hundreds of these methods which have been composed over the centuries and all have names, some being very fanciful. Better-known examples such as Plain Bob, Reverse Canterbury, Grandsire and Double Oxford are familiar to most ringers.
Serious ringing always starts and ends with rounds; and it must always betrue—each row must be unique, never repeated. A performance of a few hundred rows or so is called atouch. A performance of all the possible permutations possible on a set of bells is called anextent, with bells there are! possible permutations. With five bells 5! = 120 which takes about 5 minutes. With seven bells 7! = 5,040 which takes about three hours to ring. This is the definition of a full peal on 7 (5,000 or more for other numbers of bells.) Less demanding is the quarter peal of 1,260 changes. When ringing peals and quarter peals on fewer bells several complete extents are rung consecutively. When ringing on higher numbers of bells less than a complete extent is rung. On eight bells the extent is 8!=40,320 which has only been accomplished once, taking nearly nineteen hours.
Ringing in English belltowers became a popular hobby in the late 17th century, in theRestoration era; the scientific approach which led to modern method ringing can be traced to two books of that era,Tintinnalogia or the Art of Ringing (published in 1668 by Richard Duckworth andFabian Stedman) andCampanalogia (also by Stedman; first released 1677; seeBibliography). 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 novelThe Nine Tailors (1934) centres around change ringing of bells in aFenland church; her father was a clergyman.
The bells in Russian tradition are sounded by their clappers, attached to ropes; a special system of ropes is developed individually for every belltower. All the ropes are gathered in one place, where the bell-ringer stands. The ropes (usually all ropes) are not pulled, but rather pressed with hands or legs. Since one end of every rope is fixed, and the ropes are kept in tension, a press or even a punch on a rope makes a clapper move.
The RussianTsar Bell is the largest extant bell in the world.[citation needed]
Acarillon is apitched percussion instrument that is played with akeyboard and consists of at least 23bells. The bells arecast inbronze, hung in fixed suspension, andtuned inchromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniously together. They are struck with clappers connected to a keyboard of wooden batons played with the hands andpedals played with the feet. Often housed inbell towers, carillons are usually owned by churches, universities, or municipalities. They can include an automatic system through which the time is announced and simple tunes are played throughout the day.
Carillons come in many designs, weights, sizes, and sounds. They are among the world's heaviest instruments, and the heaviest carillon weighs over 91 metric tons (100 short tons). Most weigh between 4.5 and 15 metric tons (5.0 and 16.5 short tons). To be considered a carillon, a minimum of 23 bells are needed; otherwise, it is called achime. Standard-sized instruments have about 50, and the world's largest has 77 bells. The appearance of a carillon depends on the number and weight of the bells and the tower in which it is housed. They may be found in towers which are free-standing or connected to a building. The bells of a carillon may be directly exposed to the elements or hidden inside the structure of their tower.
The origins of the carillon can be traced to theLow Countries—present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and theFrench Netherlands—in the 16th century. The modern carillon was invented in 1644 whenJacob van Eyck and theHemony brothers cast the first tuned carillon. The instrument experienced a peak until the late-18th century, a decline during theFrench Revolution, a revival in the late 19th century, a second decline during theFirst andSecond World Wars, and a second revival thereafter.UNESCO has designated56 belfries in Belgium and France as aWorld Heritage Site and recognized the carillon culture of Belgium as anintangible cultural heritage.
According to counts by various registries, there areabout 700 carillons worldwide. Most are in and around the Low Countries, though nearly 200 have been constructed in North America. Almost all extant carillons were constructed in the 20th century. Additionally, there are about 500 "non-traditional" carillons, which due to some component of its action being electrified or computerized, most registries do not consider to be carillons. A plurality arelocated in the United States, and most of the others in Western Europe. A few "traveling" or "mobile" carillons are fixed to a frame that enables them to be transported.
TheEllacombe apparatus is an English mechanism devised for chiming by striking stationary bells with external hammers. However it does not have the same sound asfull circle ringing due to the absence of the doppler effect derived from bell rotation and the lack of a damping effect of the clapper after each strike.
It requires only one person to operate. Each hammer is connected by a rope to a fixed frame in the bell-ringing room. When in use the ropes are taut, and pulling one of the ropes towards the player will strike the hammer against the bell. To enable normal full circle ringing on the same bells, the ropes are slackened to allow the hammers to drop away from the moving bells.
The system was devised in 1821 by ReverendHenry Thomas Ellacombe of Gloucestershire, who first had such a system installed inBitton in 1822. He created the system to make conventional bell-ringers redundant, so churches did not have to tolerate the behaviour of what he thought were unruly bell-ringers.
However, in reality, it required very rare expertise for one person to ring changes. The sound of a chime was a poor substitute for the rich sound of swinging bells, and the apparatus fell out of fashion. Consequently, the Ellacombe apparatus has been disconnected or removed from many towers in theUK. In towers where the apparatus remains intact, it is generally used like acarillon, but to play simple tunes, or if expertise exists, to play changes.
Bellfounding is thecasting and tuning of largebronzebells in afoundry for use such as inchurches,clock towers and public buildings, either to signify the time or an event, or as a musicalcarillon orchime. Large bells are made by castingbell metal in moulds designed for their intendedmusical pitches. Further finetuning is then performed using alathe to shave metal from the bell to produce a distinctive bell tone by sounding the correct musicalharmonics.
Bellfounding in East Asia dates from about 2000 BCE[7] and in Europe from the 4th or 5th century CE. In Britain,archaeological excavations have revealed traces offurnaces, showing that bells were often cast on site in pits in a church or its grounds. Centralised foundries became common when railways allowed easy transportation of bells, leading to the dominance of founders such as theWhitechapel Bell Foundry andJohn Taylor & Co of Loughborough.
Elsewhere in the world a number of foundries are still active, some using traditional methods, and some using the latest foundry techniques. Modern foundries produce harmonically tuned bells using principles established in the late 19th century; some of these are also highly decorative.
The tuning of a bell is completely dependent on its shape. When first cast it is approximately correct, but it is then machined on a tuning lathe to remove metal until it is in tune. This is a very complex exercise which took centuries of empirical practice, and latterly modern acoustic science, to understand.
If a bell is part of a set to be rung or played together, then the initial dominant perceived sound, called the strike note, must be tuned to a designated note of a common scale. In addition each bell will emit harmonics, or partials, which must also be tuned so that these are not discordant with the bell's strike note. This is what Fuller-Maitland writing inGrove's dictionary of music and musicians meant when he said : "Good tone means that a bell must be in tune with itself."[9]
The principal partials are;
Further, less dominant, partials include the major, third and perfect fifth in the octave above these.
"Whether a founder tunes the nominal or the strike note makes little difference, however, because the nominal is one of the main partials that determines the tuning of the strike note."[10] A heavy clapper brings out lower partials (clappers often being about 3% of a bell's mass), while a higher clapper velocity strengthens higher partials (0.4 m/s being moderate). 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.
Bells are generally around 80% copper and 20% tin (bell metal), with the tone varying according to material.
Tone and pitch is also affected by the method in which a bell is struck. Asian large bells are often bowl shaped but lack the lip and are often not free-swinging. Also note the special shape ofBianzhong bells, allowing two tones. The scaling or size of most bells to each other may be approximated by the equation for circular cylinders:
f=Ch/D2
whereh is thickness,D is diameter, andC 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 theRoyal 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.[11]
The following organizations promote the study, music, collection and/or preservation and restoration of bells.[16] Nation(s) covered are given in parentheses.
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