Apparently “campanophile” is the word for what I’ve become, though it’s the rare campanophile with proficiency on no kind of bell instrument. My first introduction to Cambridge ringing began, of all places, at a happy hour with Googlers in New York. Someone on my team was carrying on about the exceptional bells in his Harvard dorm. “If you think that’s unusual,” muttered our resident Englishman, “let me tell you about the bells at Cambridge.”
I will not, here, attempt to explain the finer points of English change ringing, noting only that the storytelling advantages afforded by practicing in an 11th-century structure traditionally associated with the inventor of the discipline are outweighed by the frustrations of a creakily-hung set of bells. After a term of nearly-weekly practice I was barely able to ring a single chime on a regular interval. My only attempt at real method ringing, a handbell practice during Lent term, was disastrous.
Method names—stately Cambridge Court Bob Royal, pornographic Reverse Canterbury Pleasure Place Doubles, inexplicable Plastic Swan Slow Course Minor—are a continuous source of amusement.
The west coast has limited opportunities for change ringing, and the Bay Area none; since returning to the states I’ve instead had to take up a rather different sort of ringing, operating clappers and keyboards rather than ropes and wheels. Carillon music is a more refined, less muscular practice; harder to get wrong but harder to make musical. I stumbled at the beginning of my final performance of the semester—it seems somehow worse than making an error in an ordinary recital, when your error is broadcast to every uninvited listener within a mile’s radius; but correspondingly more satisfying to recover and make the hills ring with evening music.