Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell -- The Tintinnabulation Topic

Here's a strangely compelling record by Sammy Davis Jr., which made him soar in my opinion at the time (although the swinging likes of "Back In Your Own Back Yard" has always been a guilty pleasure of mine). "The Shelter Of Your Arms" took him into the US top twenty in 1964. What a fabulous arrangement, including the deft use of chimes:  

This has to be the most epic use of tubular bells in any pop song:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_Your_Love_(Chic_song)

This 1925 recording by Bruno Walter and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is of the "Transformation Music" from Act One of Parsifal, Richard Wagner's last completed opera. The solemn tolling of four bells (often rendered electronically these days -- not a nice sound) is first heard here at 3:00:     



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal

Well let's do it right now (the word in question is at 2:51). Thanks, LS -- Ochs is a fascinating if tragic figure:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs

This work is performed by its composer Lee Hinkle. The YouTube blurb is worth reproducing in full: 

"Fear of Music: Bow Bells for solo orchestra chimes and soundscape was composed by Dr. Lee Hinkle in 2014 and received its world premiere performance in May 2014.

"I have always been fascinated by the power of music; and more specifically the power music can have over the brain.

"I had the idea for this piece when I read Dr. Oliver Sach's book Musicophilia. In the book, Dr. Sach's describes case studies of patients who suffer from strange medical afflictions related to music. One set of stories stuck with me when he described an affliction some of his patients had suffered from called 'Fear of Music.'

"One of the patients who suffered from Fear of Music was an elderly gentleman. Every evening at exactly the same time he experienced a serious uncontrollable seizure. It took doctors quite some time to figure out what was causing the seizure, but they soon figured out that he had been listening to the BBC news broadcast every evening at the time of his seizure and the sounds of that broadcast had been causing his seizure.

"The broadcast began with a recording of the famous 'Bow Bells' from the church St Mary le-Bow in London, England. (The term 'Cockney' actually refers specifically to the group of people who live in London within earshot of the Bow Bells.) Upon realizing what was causing his affliction, his doctors took him to the church St Mary le-Bow to see if they could recreate the situation that was causing his seizure, however, the sound of the bells in real life did not cause a seizure: it was only the pre-recorded sound of the Bow Bells that caused his affliction. I was so flabbergasted by this story that I took to writing this piece Fear of Music: Bow Bells for solo orchestra chimes and soundscape.

"Fear of Music: Bow Bells explores the orchestra chimes in an unusual fashion. Aside from the fact that orchestra chimes are seldom considered a solo instrument, I thought it would be interesting to see what I could do with them that would not only showcase the instrument but also find some new sounds that the chimes could produce. This exploration of sounds concludes at the end of the piece as I recreate as best as possible the sound of the Bow Bells on the orchestra chimes. My live playing is then slowly taken over by the prerecorded sound of the Bow Bells to close the piece."

What about those overwhelming out-of-time bells at the end of The Beach Boys "I Do?"

Hector Berlioz in the fifth movement of his Symphonie fantastique (1830) stipulates two individual church-style bells in C and G, a tradition that has been upheld to this day. Here they enter just before the three-minute mark. Turn up the volume as the movement starts very quietly. Sir Colin Davis, Berlioz specialist numero uno, conducts the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest: 



And now, a jk anecdote: In almost all the scores I've seen of the work, the single stroke on the suspended cymbal (played with a sponge-wrapped mallet) in the very last bar is added literally as an afterthought, in a single-bar, single-line bracket below the double basses. When we heard the work live in our local concert hall recently, that cymbal was located away from the other instruments. The percussionist entrusted with this duty left his post at the last moment and leapt across to play the all-important note. What a wonderfully graphic way to illustrate Berlioz's afterthought. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie_fantastique

Olivier Messiaen completed his orchestral composition Chronochromie in 1960. In this 1965 recording (the one I bought a year later), Antal Dorati conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Now the penultimate movement, "Epode" has 18 solos strings (12 violins, 4 violas and 2 cellos) playing a chorus of birdsong from all over the world for more than four minutes! The effect when the full orchestra -- bristling with percussion including (yes!) tubular bells -- returns for the "Coda" is overwhelming. (There is a comparable if less radical transition in The Mothers of Invention's "The Little House I Used To Live In".)





Easy stuff: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronochromie

Difficult stuff: escholarship.org/content/qt5xw0x3gc/qt5xw0x3gc.pdf

Forgot this one. There's something decidedly manic about Spiritualized's "No God Only Religion", which opens and closes with the sound of church bells:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_and_Gentlemen_We_Are_Floating_in_Space

Continuing my investigation of Wagner's self-designed bells, I came across a second picture (click link below):

www.alamy.com/two-men-play-the-gralsglocken-grail-bells-an-instrument-from-the-time-of-richard-wagner-image385783344.html

It helps clear up the mystery of the pitches of the two "barrels" on the left. So for the C–G–A–E motif, the barrels were played from left to right (see photo above). There seems to be some confusion about the role played by the frame strung with piano strings on the left, which unlike the barrels rises in pitch from left to right (E–G–A–C). It has been suggested that the barrels were not played but were to provide additional reverberation and weigh to the sound coming from the plucked stringed instrument. But that doesn't explain the hammers! Surely this set-up as a whole is analogous to the tic-tac bass, where the two sound sources (in this case strings and barrels) are played simultaneously to get the required effect.

Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov has quite a history. According to commenter GeneralLuigiTBC this video features the composer's Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imperial Theatres, and not his Revised Version of 1872 (as designated by the uploader), which received its first performance in 1874 in Saint Petersburg (see the wiki below).

The bells and related metal percussion can be heard during the opening two minutes and the closing two minutes of the "Coronation Scene". But please listen to it all to soak up the atmosphere. Thrilling stuff.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Godunov_(opera)