MUSIC

Bells are the sounds of the season

More than just ringing goes into an Austin Handbell Ensemble performance

By Randy Harriman
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, November 30, 2008

If any sound is emblematic of the Christmas holidays, it is the sound of bells. Whether the sound is one we've actually heard or one we've just heard about (sleigh bells?), the "tintinnabulation of the bells," as Poe puts it, pervades our aural senses this time of year.

The Austin Handbell Ensemble is adding their celebratory ringing to the local Yuletide scene with three free concerts this week: a condensed performance as a part of Central Presbyterian Church's "Noonday Concert" series and full concerts at Wimberley United Methodist Church and Austin's University Presby-terian Church.

Titled "Dreaming of Christmas," the concerts feature arrangements of familiar holiday music as well as compositions written for bell ensembles.

The all-volunteer force that makes up the Austin ensemble is dedicated to high-quality performances of musical literature that is a lot more complex in its construction and execution than one might suppose.

The Austin group is a community ensemble, much like the Austin Civic Orchestra or the Austin Symphonic Band, and it is part of a growing community of such organizations. It is not affiliated with a church, although many churches do have handbell choirs.

"When we started in 1995 there were maybe 50 community handbell ensembles around the country," says Bob Avant, the group's music director and conductor. "Now there are several hundred. People are discovering that handbells are fun to ring and nice to listen to, especially when you do more than just ring them."

A handbell, as one web source describes it, is "a bell designed to be rung by hand." You might therefore expect that the way to produce sound from the handbell is to just pick it up by its flexible handle and ring it; but as Avant implies, that's only one of many techniques that can be employed.

You can hit the bell with a wooden or plastic mallet. You can dampen the sound by placing your thumb on the bell. You can strike the bell against the (well-padded) surface of the table on which it usually rests. You can "pluck" the clapper by hand. You can rub a special stick around the bell's rim.

The Austin ensemble employs all these techniques and more to produce a wide variety of effects and sonorities in the music they perform. Their level of competence is such that a national publisher of handbell music has them record new pieces and then distributes the recordings to other handbell ensembles as a marketing tool.

The 13 ringers in the ensemble use 61 bells that span five octaves, with each bell representing a pitch. Each player is in charge of up to four bells.

Until about 15 years ago, that would have been the extent of the group's instrumentation. But at about that time, handchimes were invented and eventually added to the arsenal of handbell ensembles.

A handchime is a square tube of aluminum with slots cut in one end. Struck with a mallet, the chime produces a sustained tuning-forklike tone, enhancing and expanding the sonic possibilities of the ensemble. The ones played by the Austin group also span five octaves starting with the C below the bass clef, the tube for which is about 5 feet long.

So add five octaves of chimes to the five octaves of bells, throw in an additional player for the lowest octave of chimes, and you end up with 14 very busy players and a busy conductor, producing just about every ringing sound imaginable in music that is perfect for this festive time of the year.