The bells studied in the PhD thesis are primarily used for English Change Ringing, which started in the early 1600s and the compositions played on them (methods) are based on mathematics, specifically Group Theory, rather than being tunes in the normal sense - the aim is to ring all the possible permutations of the bells.

The Mathematics of Bell Ringing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs

Performances (Peals) consist of 5040 changes (sequences), have a strict set of rules and take around 3 hours 15 minutes to complete, and must be rung entirely from memory, with no written aids.

In the early 1960s a CS algorithm for efficiently enumerating permutations was published, the Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm. It's in Knuth, for those who have access to a copy. Unfortunately for them, it had been known by English Change Ringers as Plain Changes, since around 1621.