When Englishmen ring their church bells, they use dog -difficult tunes

The television had a nice detective series about the elderly who were busy with each other’s voluntary termination of life. It was a hassle and gradually got more and more feet in the ground, but was nevertheless brought to a successful conclusion. It played in England, that made it extra beautiful. Think of those gardens and pubs, think of those hollow roads and those rural churches with their idyllic cemetery and that peculiar bells. (Don’t think of the English home furnishings.)

Yes, think of that peculiar bells. Almost nowhere do clocks sound like that happens in England. Get YouTube for a good example. Choose the search term ‘Change Ringingand you are right down to your knees the videos who make the wonderful gesture heard. The majority of the majority is educational because the British themselves also know that their gesture is special. It dates from the seventeenth century and is therefore worthwhile. In addition, it is thunder.

If there are sounds in the Netherlands, sound will ring more or with random together. Sometimes in phase, then not for a while. We here think that is beautiful enough.

In England the clocks never sound at the same time, but always one after the other. Sometimes you hear the well-known do-re-mi-so-so-la ladder, but during the same lazy it can suddenly be the other way around La-So-FA-Mi-Re-do-do and usually it is something in between. If it is the whistleblowers, you don’t hear the same tune once. Within the tune every clock is used, but never more than once and there are no tips with twice ‘re’ or twice ‘mi’. That would not be possible either, because every tune takes only two seconds, it does not matter whether it will be put together by five or eight or ten clocks.

The sloping clapper

It is less enigmatic than it seems. The pendulum time of the modest clocks used for Change Ringing is around four seconds. A complete course takes that long. In that back and forth, the slanting clapper hits the clock twice. (A Slow motion video Show that.) The interval between the clapper strokes is therefore two seconds. Within that interval, all participating clocks must be heard once.

The physicist sees a problem: the small clocks that produce the high tones swing a bit faster than the large, heavy. That is true, but according to a consulted expert, it only saves around 10 percent. And the English whistleblowers can do the pendulum time a bit adjustthere is the clou of the Change Ringing. The English clocks are so hung up That they make a course of 360 degrees with every complete swing. In their highest position they are upside down. This hot Full Circle Ringing. Here in Europe, clocks are often no further than 70 degrees pulled out of the vertical position, with the English clocks that is 180 degrees. In that high, upside down position, the clock is extra sensitive to the procedure that causes gear or delay. That is a bit different for every clock and that is why every clock prefers to get its own louder.

It is quite a chore to get a clock in regular swing because the rope on which the whistleblower pulls wraps high above him rather far Around the ‘clock wheel’. It is even more difficult to work in perfect harmony with the other whistleblowers, especially if there are many clocks. That number can go up to ten or twelve. Remember that the effect of the ‘intervention’ just mentioned sounds only 2 seconds later.

What makes ‘Wisselluiden’ so dog -difficult is the swapping. Clocks that are brought to ring immediately before or one after the other can have you changed in the time by stopping the early clock and speeding up the late clock. It is common that in A schedule to display. The clocks are always numbered from high to low in order 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. If there are four clocks, a ‘tune’ can be displayed by 1-2-3-4, for example. If you let two clocks change, it will be 2-1-3-4 or 1-3-2-4 or 1-2-4-3. Clocks that are a bit further apart in the initial position, such as 1 and 3 or 2 and 4, cannot take each other’s place, the time difference is too great for that. That is also not necessary at all because it is also possible by changing neighboring clocks, all conceivable ‘tune’ (permutations) are also possible. At four clocks there are 24, at five clocks 120 and at six: 720. 720 changes last half an hour.

The challenge is to make all conceivable permutations sound in succession without interruption without being one twice. Humanally, this is only possible if agreement has been reached in advance about the schedule of the changes and a lot of schemes have been devised, some are centuries old. Not all schedules have sufficient regularity to remember them well, there is one complete mathematics created around the Wisseluiden. Nice: you can always two Couples change neighboring clocks.

Outside of England, only Change Ringing is done in four places in Europe: in Ypres in Flemish, in the French Vernet-les-Bains (Pyrenees) and in Dordrecht. In the Grote Kerk, turning skin with 10 clocks, and the Klokhuis next door has 8 small clocks. We thank the latter to carilloneur Jaap van der Ende, who was possessed from Wisseluiden in the late 1960s when he was the detective The Nine Tailors from Dorothy L. Sayers. In that book, the alternating schedule has a key role.

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