A revolution in English bell ringing

The other reason jump changes are not a revolution and have remained just a curiosity is physics, something that's ignored by the article.

For non-ringers, in change ringing the bells rotate 360 degrees each time they strike, from mouth up to mouth up. The clapper hits the bell when the it has rotated roughly 270 degrees from mouth up and is more or less horizontal, approximately 2 seconds after it starts moving. The bells are usually in the 100kg to 1000kg range (for US folks, that's 220lb to 2200lb), although they can be up to 4000kg. The only point when the ringer can exert control on the bell via the rope is when it is near the balance and mouth upwards, and speeding it up or slowing it down any more than one "beat" is physically very difficult on heavier bells, particularly if you are doing it for a full peal, which usually takes 3+ hours.

About the least important thing in the 2022 rules changes (https://framework.cccbr.org.uk/version2) was the allowing of jump changes.

p.s. there's a split-screen video showing the ringer and the bell he's ringing here: https://youtu.be/qrdLP15Xsuk?t=67

It has ringers taking breaks (for beer, I think) during peals and handing off to other ringers which I was surprised was allowed (till bellringing friends told me it wasn't...). Still a good book though.

What a liberty! Straight through the lights, of course!

"I am taking such pains with these things, not so much out of concern that the pupil might, if they were not explained, thoughtlessly accept and mechanically apply them, as to establish explicitly that these principles are not derived from aesthetics but from practical considerations. If what is known as aesthetics does in fact contain much that is merely practical handling of the material, and if what is known as symmetry is perhaps often not much more than an organization of the material that reveals a sensible regard for its properties, yet I consider it worthwhile to set down these observations. For the conditions of practicality can change, if we take a different view of the material and if the purpose changes. But aesthetics alleges it has discovered eternal laws."

-- Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony

That sentence is specifically about composers of methods in change ringing, where the musical possibilities are tightly constrained by the rules and the physics of ringing large bells. Change ringing is based on permutations constructed by swapping adjacent pairs. (Except for the jump changes that the article is about.) For a “triples” peal on 7 bells the ringers are supposed to ring all 5040 possible permutations. It’s called “triples” because you can make up to 3 swaps at a time; one of the challenges (for example) is to construct a triples peal that only uses triple changes.

I grew up hearing these bells and being able to listen to them on demand is one the last great things on the internet, for me https://youtu.be/IVvAIYA4uIA?si=qIQGqgNk1JNN4GTw

> Bells on Sunday

I prefer a nice drop of Laphroaig myself.

93% of the rings of 6 bells or more which are rung for English style change ringing are in England. Source: https://dove.cccbr.org.uk/

Change ringing is a branch of Group Theory and is mentioned in Knuth. The Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm for efficiently generating permutations was published in the early 1960s, but has been known about by change ringers since the 1600s. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinhaus%E2%80%93Johnson%E2%8...

Not bell ringing - change ringing. Most places they play a tune on them; our ringers work out mathematical permutations instead.

Edit: ...and I should add: Sayers was quite reactionary, preternaturally English, and writing in the 1930s, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it wasn't true that change ringing was uniquely English.

There is some change ringing in the USA, just not very much of it. There are towers around.. https://www.nagcr.org/towers-and-bands

There's even a few change ringing towers dotted around parts of Africa, Australia, some of Europe. Just few and far between.

But when compared to England, where practically every town can be relied upon to have at least a 6 bell tower where change ringing can happen, it's no comparison.

Very few churches in the American suburbs have bells, and most have replaced them with speakers playing recorded bells if they have anything at all :(

This might be two ways of saying the same thing, but I wonder if it’s less about culture and more about having a lot more big-giant-bell-era churches. Not that you implied your observation is about culture. I’m doing that.