For Virginia Scott, playing handbells has been a family
tradition for more than six decades.
”
It’s sort of a family thing for me,
”
she says.
”
My grandmother got some bells in 1938. She had a bell choir of
her own back in Massachusetts.
”
For Virginia Scott, playing handbells has been a family tradition for more than six decades.
“It’s sort of a family thing for me,” she says. “My grandmother got some bells in 1938. She had a bell choir of her own back in Massachusetts.”
Bells bring a special resonance to the holiday season – the “Carol of the Bells” is a perennial Christmas favorite on local radio stations. And the South Valley has several churches with bell choirs that play during the season.
Scott, a Gilroy resident, is the musical director and bell choir director at Morgan Hill’s Saint John the Divine Episcopal Church and says the bells’ engaging tones bring a lot of joy to church services.
Bell choirs are made up of several people, each of whom play a set of bells dealing with a specific note. Think of it like the keys of piano, Scott explains. Playing one key on its own does not create much musical effect. But every member of the bell choir playing their specific notes at the right moment creates a charming harmony that inspires the listener.
“The choir is a musical instrument, and I’m directing the musical instrument,” she says. “If you’re missing a person, it’s a lot like having a piano with a key missing. … The whole thing put together sounds very beautiful.”
Saint John the Divine’s bell choir is made up of 11 people who play three-octaves of bell. Each person is in charge of two whole notes plus the accidentals (the flats and sharps). The youngest member is eight years old and the oldest is in her 60s, she said.
“You start simple,” she said. “One half of the ringers have no musical experience at all.”
The ringers wear gloves to keep oil off of the bell’s bronze surface, she said. Oil in the skin can eat at the metal and change the tone as well as make the bells look ugly, she said.
The tradition of handbell ringing goes back to England. Churches long ago often needed to ring their steeple bells to work out the different mathematical patterns to create music.
“Instead of annoying the neighbors, they developed these small bells so they could practice,” Scott says. What started off as practice bells for the large steeple bells became a musical instrument in their own right.
Other South Valley churches that have handbell choirs include the Morgan Hill Presbyterian Church, the Saint Stephens Episcopal Church in Gilroy and the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gilroy.
The Good Shepherd Lutheran Church incorporates the handbell ringing into almost every Sunday morning service, Pastor Ron Koch said.
“We use them in the liturgy,” he said.
This Christmas Eve, the church will hold a service which will include half an hour of special Christmas music including handbells and a liturgical ballet dance done by Koch’s daughter Esther Koch. The service starts at 9:30 p.m.
The Morgan Hill Presbyterian Church incorporates handbell ringing into its youth program. It has a choir called “Faithful Ringers” made up of nine young players, and “Tintinnabulation” for its junior high and high school children, said Marilyn Markham, the church’s organist and handbell director.
