Oh, the lessons you will learn by playing 45 bell pieces in the space of six hours!
Hi. So on Saturday I played many, many bell pieces in not-so-many hours thanks to the fine folks at AGEHR Area III, and as a service to you, I will now share the information I learned from this session:
I am a much better sight-reader than most handbell ringers.
Assuming that this is an accurate cross-section of available handbell music from levels 1 through 3, I will draw the conclusion that approximately 2 percent of all level 1 through 3 handbell music is terrifically terrific, 13 percent is greatly great, 55 percent is okayly okay, and 30 percent is eh. (The only terrifically terrific piece I heard, by the by, is H. Dean Wagner's "Fantasy on Kingsfold," a beautiful, haunting level 2+ piece that should be played by every handbell choir attended by readers of my weblog.) (And as an aside, I've apparently now heard a third [two] of H. Dean's entire handbell oeuvre [six], and both of that third are t.t. Good job H. Dean. I mean terrific job, H. Dean.)
The biggest problem with handbell composition these days is that composers do not understand that "Theme and Variations" does not mean that you can simply play the theme over and over and forget the last two words of the appropriate phrase. On something like ten pieces, we would play the piece from the beginning to maybe the mid-point, which all sounded pretty much the same to me, and the director would stop us and say, "Yeah, the rest of the piece is pretty much like that." Or she'd intro the piece by saying, "Yeah, this piece is pretty repetitive." I am not joshing. Except she probably did not say "yeah."
Cathy Moklebust's "Faith, Hope, and Love" is only o.o. I'm as surprised as you are.
It is stupid that 6/8 time mandates that a piece is level 3. But it is stupider when a level 1+ piece is in 3/4 time with quarter note at 144 BPM -- yes, 144! for level 1+! -- to approximate a 6/8 feel without actually writing the song in 6/8. (There was another piece -- level 2 -- that had the final section in 3/4 time even though the beats were clearly on beat 1 and on beat 2.5, no doubt to get around the 6/8 rule. That really ticked me off.)
A few g.g. pieces: L. Larson's "At the Table of the Lord" (at least the "Bread of the World in Mercy Broken" section, which is the only one we played), K. Lowenberg's "If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Me,""Festa" by Arnold Sherman (who ran the composing seminar I attended at AGEHR national and who recently wrote a very nice e-mail personally inviting me to his Composition Master Class), and K. Buckwalter's "Sing We Now of Christmas" (which we listened to rather than played, as it has a non-optional organ part, and we had no organist).
I hate hate hate when songs combine these two rhythms...
...because trust me, people will always play everything in rhythm the first.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
