The Metropolitan Times Oct. 31, 1995, C9
Ringing of the great bells of Congress.

Getting it right takes lots of pull
By Andrea Tortora, Scripps Howard news Service

The melodic sounds of the bells are heard at the opening and close of Congress, on federal holidays and every Thursday night, when those who make the music practice.
These change ringers, as they are known, make up a dedicated group and a small one—there are only 300 people in all of the United States and Canada capable of playing the bells.
Ringing the 10 Congress Bells is not simply yanking on a rope.
“There’s a huge mass you’re dealing with upstairs, and this is fine-tuning with the fingertips,” ringing master John King says.
He’s right. A few (supervised) yanks on the rope illustrate the difficulty of making the lovely sounds.
Housed on the Old Post Office Tower’s 10th floor, the bells weight 11,987 pounds. The largest, striking a D note, weighs 2,953 pounds; the smallest, ringing an F sharp, weighs 581 pounds.
Their mammoth size helps amplify everything.
“The most gratifying part of it all is that I get to make this much noise,” tower captain Matthew Sorell yells over the din during a practice. “If I wasn’t a change ringer, I think I’d be playing the bagpipes.”
Decorated with a flower motif, the bells were given to Congress in 1976 by Britain’s Ditchley Foundation to commemorate the link between the two countries.
Attached to a wooden wheel with a rope running around it, the bells are arranged in wooden frames so their ropes hang in a circle in the ringing chamber.
This setup places the bells in a delicate balance, enabling the smallest person to ring the largest bell easily.
Ringers just need to be tall enough to reach about halfway up the rope. Wooden boxes aid those who are on the short side.
The group makes its magic from below, working the bells through rigorous and intricate melodies. Standing on the orange carpet of the octagonal chamber, ringers pull the ropes downward.
Some bend at the waist; others stay straight, using only their arms.
As the ropes ascend and pull pairs of arms upward, each rope’s sally--a 3-foot tuft of red, white and blue wool—glides toward the ceiling, like a caterpillar racing toward home.
This turns the bell. When the bell rounds its circle, a ringer grabs the sally to stop the spinning and pulls again.
“If you have a really good band,” Mr. Sorell says, “they look as if they are bored to tears. The faces are blank.”
A ringer is a picture of stern concentration while ringing a bell, all the while watching the person next to him or her.
What makes change ringing difficult is the time delay. The bell rings about two seconds after the rope has been pulled—about the length of time it takes the bell to rotate.
The mental challenge is more demanding than the physical work.
“You’ve got numbers running through your head all the time, trying to figure out when you need to pull the rope to make the bell ring at the right time,” Mr. Sorell says.
Every once in a while the ringers’ straight stares are broken by a smile or laughter.
“Sorry!” ringer Meredith Morris yells in the middle of playing “Yorkshire.” Her ring was off.
“I spent the whole time trying to figure out if I was the 5 or 6 bell and not really ringing either,” Miss Morris says at the end of the round.
“I’ll say,” Quilla Roth responds.
The group erupts into laughter, their mirth echoing in the ringing chamber like chimes.
“There are times when we all get on each other’s nerves, but there’s also a sense of community,” says Miss Roth, 47. An information systems manager, she started ringing at age 15.
“I feel I can always improve,” she says.
Within the group, Miss Roth is known as the best ringer. She makes the task look effortless, barely moving her arms, keeping her back nail-straight.
Not everyone in the band is at Miss Roth’s level. As tower captain, Mr. Sorell, 26, is responsible for deciding what to ring at practices and performances, depending on who is available.
A doctoral student at George Mason University, Mr. Sorell started ringing at age 17 during his first year of college in his home country of Australia.
Now he helps others, such as Nancy Perry, learn the calls, the pulls, the feel of the rope. A 52-year-old computer programmer, Miss Perry started learning the art six months ago.
Hearing the bells ring during President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration inspired her to join.
“It’s not like a hand bell when you get that instant feedback,” Miss Perry says. “You can’t see it. You can only tell what it’s doing by the feel of the rope.”
Numbered from 1 to 10 and rung in order from the lightest to the heaviest, the bells strike in a sequence known as rounds.
To create variations in sound, bells are made to change places with adjacent bells in a row, weaving in and out like folk dancers.
Instead or ringing bells 5, 6, 7 and 8, you can get 7, 5, 6, 8, dong, dong, dong, dong,” ringer Joe Fickus says. Good ringing, the 26-year old banker says, creates rhythmically sharp notes.
Once the basic rounds or scales are learned, they can be combined to perform more organized melodies.
The most complex is a full peal: 5,000 or more changes, of which none can be repeated. There are no breaks during a full peal, which takes at least three hours.
There are the more musical tunes, all from England, like “Yorkshire Surprise Major” and “Erin Caters.” And then there are those that are easy to memorize, such as “Plain Bob Major.”
Change ringing started in the Middle Ages. By 1668, a guide to the musical skill was published. The British brought bell towers to the American colonies, installing bells in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston, S.C.
Change ringing even played a part in the American Revolution. According to the North American Guild of Change Ringers., Paul Revere was a member of the band of ringers at Boston’s Old North church in 1750, when he was 15. His familiarity with the tower and his relationship with its keeper enabled him to use the tower for the lantern signals that directed his midnight ride.
“They say two of the other ringers snuck up into the tower, since they knew all the ways to get in,” Mr. Fickus says.
Today England still has a monopoly on ringing towers.
John and Joy Harding, both 50, of Northamptonshire, England, rang with the Washington ringing Society during their October vacation in Washington.
There are 350 towers in England. In the United States there are 27; in Canada, just six.
The network of change ringers and the precision of the art offer instant rapport for traveling ringers. The Hardings say ringing in Washington is no different from ringing in England.
Mr. Sorell, the tower captain, has visited towers in London and parts of the United States.
“I can go anywhere and go to the tower and ring with the group,” he says. “Usually they offer me a place to stay.”
For Kate Spangler and Kris Kracker, seniors from Kalamazoo College in Michigan, ringing is a way to meet people.
Working on their senior projects, both women chose Washington as their research city in part for its bell towers—which include on at the Washington National Cathedral.
“It’s a group to be in. We came here and didn’t know anyone. Now, we have all of these friends through ringing,” Miss Kracker says.
Of the society’s 15 to 20 members—attendance varies—most have been ringing for at least four years and plan to continue.
Miss Kracker is picking graduate schools based on whether they have a bell tower nearby. “I think of the bells as my happy thoughts,” she says. “And it’s a really good group of people.”
For Mr. Fickus, the reasons for staying are a little more carnal. “To tell the truth, I’m in it for the women,” he says. “But really, it’s kind of like other clubs. You belong to it because of a common thing, but you’re there to meet people like yourself.”
Options for gathering with other ringers are announced at the end of each two-hour practice: The society in Philadelphia is having a dinner; ringers in Raleigh, N.C., are hosting a get-together, group members still are needed to ring the cathedral bells before a friend’s wedding.
Before the tower is locked up, the bells must be “rung down” or turned back to their upright position. Members grab a rope and pull down repeatedly, coiling sections of the rope around their hands as they proceed.
Once the bells are turned the ropes are hooked onto a spider—a metal disc- the center of the chamber used to keep the ropes out of reach when not in use. Those old cartoons of a careless person sent into the air at the end of a bell rope are not pure fiction, Mr. Sorell says.
On the way out, John Harding, the ringer from Northamptonshire, mentions that in England it’s traditional to go to the pub after practice.
And so they do.