This past week was the last week of classes before Carthage’s spring break, and I don’t know anyone – students, staff, or faculty – who wasn’t desperate for break to begin. I don’t know why the spring semester feels so busier and stressful than the fall – or why it’s so difficult to just hold things together – but it is. All I could think about for most of the week was how wonderful it would be have a few days of relative calm… or at least as calm as life can be for a church musician on the brink of Holy Week.
With all of the stresses of this week swirling around me, I must confess that I was less than thrilled Thursday night to drag my weary bones to Holy Communion for a few minutes of the bell choir’s rehearsal. I had promised their marvelous director, Diane Johnson, that I would swing by so we could run thru the Palm Sunday piece which combined the bells with the adult and children’s choirs. The previous Sunday morning when I talked to her, swinging by seemed like a fine idea; by the time Thursday rolled around, it seemed like the dumbest idea I’d ever had. Part of the frustration was that I was squeezing in this side trip between teaching a makeup voice lesson and attending the first half of a concert by the Carthage chamber orchestra, which meant an evening of chasing around – the last thing I wanted.
But as it turns out, that little visit to bell choir rehearsal offered up one of the best moments of the whole week! When Diane saw me come in, she asked if I had time to hear the bell choir play something besides the piece for Sunday- something featuring a new technique which they had just learned. Curious and intrigued, I said sure – and sat myself down on the front stairs of the sanctuary, having absolutely no idea what was about to ensue.
The men and women of the bell choir proceeded to take in hand small white cylinders that I figured they were going to use as mallets to strike the bells. (I’ve seen that before.) But no, each person took their white cylinder and moved it rapidly around the circumference of their bell. And after a few moments, a strangely wondrous sound began to emerge from the bells, sounding roughly reminiscent to a vibraphone. My understanding is that this is the “Singing Bell” technique, and it’s inspired at least in part by the famous Singing Bowls of Tibet. A couple of the bell ringers ere telling me afterwards that it’s an incredibly tricky technique to master because you have to begin the rotation very very quickly to get the sound going, but then the movement has to slow down or the sound degrades and becomes metallic and somewhat unpleasant. But when you do it right, which they were pretty much managing to do, it’s heavenly!
(The piece, by the way, is an arrangement of the beloved hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.” And believe me, nothing could better evoke the sounds of the “cherubim and seraphim” of the text like this unearthly, ethereal sound.)
I sat there absolutely transfixed by what I was hearing – and beyond this remarkably beautiful sound was the sight of these amateur musicians applying themselves so earnestly to the task at hand. Just regular old bell ringing is hard enough, as anyone who has either done it or seen bell choirs in action will attest. In this world of short cuts and doing just enough to get by, there is something so incredibly honest about playing in a bell choir. There is no room for bluffing; nobody can play that B-flat bell except you. It takes a high level of commitment from every single person, and when it all comes together, there is nothing more exciting or gratifying – both for the players themselves and for those of us who get to enjoy their work. But then to see the bell choir taking it to another level with this new technique was nothing less than thrilling. And after a week filled with too much frustration and depletion, this unscripted moment where I got to just sit in the Holy Communion sanctuary and bask in such gorgeousness was like a touch of God’s tender grace…. when I needed it most.
pictured above: the bell choir demonstrates the “singing bells” technique for me.