Modality and Church Bells

By David Bryant

A ring of church bells is a fixed-pitch instrument, normally tuned to conform to the Major mode and in a key appropriate to the size of the tenor bell, or tonic. However, there are a number of rings of bells, usually numbering fewer than eight, which conform to some other musical mode or none at all. The purpose of this article is to look at their tuning and how this differs from the norm. Also, within rings of bells in a Major key (and especially those containing ten or more bells) it is possible to obtain rings of bells in various modes. This also will be considered.

The majority of Western music is diatonic, in that an octave in the given mode will contain six whole tone intervals between notes, and two half, or semi-tone, intervals. The intervals of a semi-tone are always placed with three tones between them, but their position within the octave determines the mode being used.

This is best demonstrated by a practical example, and the most obvious is the Major mode as it is the most often used mode in contemporary Western music. The intervals in a Major octave are as follows: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. Note that this is working from the tonic upwards, so where a ring of bells is concerned it is necessary to work upwards from the tenor - bell ringers are unique amongst musicians in numbering their notes as the scale descends, rather than the more usual way of number the notes in ascending order from the tonic. In this article I use the usual musical notation, i.e. working upwards from the tenor.

As astute readers will by now probably have realised, there are seven permutations, or modes, which can be produced by moving the locations of the semitones within the octave. Each one of these is equivalent to starting at a given point on a piano keyboard and playing eight white notes working up the keyboard. Each mode has a name, and the following table details these and the arrangement of tones and semitones within them:

Mode name	Starting note on keyboard	Arrangement of intervals within an octave
Major (or Ionian)	C	tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone
Dorian	D	tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone
Phrygian	E	semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone
Lydian	F	tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone
Mixolydian	G	tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone
Minor (or Aeolian)	A	tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone
Locrian	B	semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone

As will be appreciated, it is possible to get octaves in all of these apart from Minor and Locrian using a conventional ring of twelve, i.e. back 8 = Major, 4-11 = Dorian, 3-10 = Phrygian, 2-9 = Lydian, Front 8 = Mixolydian. With an extra treble it is also possible to get Minor (0-7), and a flat sixth also allows an additional minor eight, comprising bells 4-11 using the flat 6th in place of the sixth. This can be extended to ten using the 2^nd and 3^rd, and to twelve using an extra treble and the treble.

Although the Modes used in medieval music were in fact Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian, these can tend to sound discordant to modern ears accustomed to virtually all music being either Major or Minor although in fact these two latter modes, which are also known as Ionian and Aeolian respectively, were not introduced until the sixteenth century. The mode starting on B, Locrian, was never used in Western music as it sounds uniquely vile and discordant: if you doubt this, try ringing the straight front six of a ring of twelve! Apparently, presumably due to it being by far the most unpleasant-sounding mode, it was known as the devil's mode and consequently was not used for superstitious reasons in addition to its discordant sound.

As already stated, the majority of rings of bells are in a Major key. Minor rings sound haunting, and are especially appropriate for half-muffled ringing. Minor as described above is properly termed Melodic Minor; the other variant, Harmonic Minor, is even more effective from this point of view. The note spacings in a Harmonic Minor octave are tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, three semitones, semitone. To produce this in a ring of twelve bells requires two semitone bells, a sharp 5^th and a flat 6^th. The only tower to possess these is Worcester Cathedral, and by using the 2nd and 3rd of the twelve in addition a Harmonic Minor ten is produced, which has a unique, haunting and very beautiful sound¹.

Rings of bells conforming to all of the other modes apart from Major and Minor do exist, but such rings generally number six or fewer. It is worth noting that Mixolydian is identical to Major on six bells in any case. In addition, there are of course those rings of bells which conform to no mode at all. When modal or out-of-tune rings are restored, it is usual to tune or replace bells as necessary to bring them into a Major key.

As semitone bells (or, in musical terminology, accidentals) have been mentioned above, it seems logical here to include a note on their purpose - that of producing minor rings is an unintentional, albeit useful, consequence of having them. Their usual purpose is to provide a ring of eight in a Major key without having to use the back bells. Using only one semitone bell, there are two ways to do this with a ring of twelve. One is to use bells 2-9 with a flat 6^th in place of the 6^th, and the other is to use the front eight with a sharp 2^nd in place of the 2^nd. If the former method is used, it is possible to extend the light eight to a light ten by adding an extra treble.

I hope this article adequately explains the basics of modality, and clears up the mystique surrounding rings of bells in modes other than Major. Here let me make a request for rings of bells to be described accurately by mode. Amongst ringers, it seems quite usual to describe any rings of bells which are not Major as being Minor, whatever they actually are. I hope this article will have shown ringers that Minor is not a blanket term to describe anything which is not Major, but in fact has just as precise a meaning.

I have here refrained from discussing other musical effects which are possible using bells, such as chords, pentatonic scales, etc: I believe these are beyond the scope of a short article.

I would like to express my thanks to Sam Austin for his helpful comments on a draft of this article.

¹I am aware that this is something of an over-simplification, but to go into more details re. Natural minor, etc, is beyond the scope of this article.