A handbell, also known as a hand clock or a handbell, is a sound made by shaking it in the hand. The whole is composed of three parts: clock body, handle and hammer. The quality of the body determines the pitch of the hand clock, which is generally made of copper, but there have been glass and ceramic bodies; The old handle was usually made of solid wood, and the current handle is usually made of belt or plastic; The hammer is fixed by screws in the body of the clock, and the loudness of the hand clock can be determined by adjusting the hammer.

There are many ways for musicians to perform hand bells, the most common being by hand. And because a single hand clock has a specific pitch, the hand clock generally contains several sets of scales.

First, the origin of the hand clock mystery

1.1 Asia

The oldest surviving hand clocks originated in China and date back to about the 17th century BC. Chinese writing records early hand clocks, and the ancients imagined their sound as a transcendent force of nature. Early hand clocks were elliptical in shape, usually with a concave or mouth-like edge (see Figure 1). Around the 6th century BC, ancient Chinese began to adjust the way the hand bell was played by fixing it to a frame for striking.

(Figure 2) In ancient India, hand clocks were greatly revered for their sound and appearance. For Hindus, the hand clock symbolizes the “world lotus”, they believe that the lotus created the master of the world, and the hand clock sounds as if from the lotus. In addition, the horizontal section of the hand clock is round, similar to the lotus (see Figure 2), and this shape of the hand clock can present the best sound, so it is used today.

This shape of hand bell was inherited in Buddhism and spread to East Asia. Hand clocks were introduced to Japan in the 6th century and were used as accompaniments for singing in the 9th century. In the Imperial chant, each singer takes turns playing a small bell and striking a small gold plate, both of which have a high and unsteady tone, similar to the clear sound of Western triangle and cymbals. Among them, the performing hand clocks are roughly divided into two categories: one is the hand clock with a particularly long handle and a diameter of only 5 centimeters (see Figure 3); The other is a Buddha hand clock with a diameter of nearly 10 cm (see Figure 4). As Buddhist music, the Imperial chant has always maintained its religious and sacred sense, whether in repertoire or in the use of hand clocks.

1.2 Africa

(Figure 5) Hand clocks are native to many parts of Africa as instruments for religious ceremonies, signals and musical performances. The size of these hand clocks varies from 10cm to 40cm, with the body mostly in the shape of a flat oval and the handle mostly carved in wooden human form (see Figure 5). In addition, in some parts of Africa, two to six or even more bells were strung together on a handle and used by percussion for ensemble music or accompaniment to songs and dances.

Figure 6) In ancient Egypt, hand clocks were used for temple rituals from the 8th century BC. The date of the Egyptian hand clock is mainly based on some indirect evidence: in early Egyptian religious rituals, the gods were represented by animals. But under the influence of the new religion, animals gradually gave way to flowers, and flowers gave way to crosses. Finally, on the Coptic altar, there are traces of hand clocks replacing the cross. Although the body of the clock was small at that time, it is also the relatively intact castings of the hand clock, and most of them are oval-shaped and placed on the top of the altar (see Figure 6, note: the handle is carved with the god Bass).

1.3 Western Europe

Christian missionaries often carried hand clocks on their journeys from the Mediterranean coast and made them along the way. But most hand clocks are made of metal, so they lack resonance. Like a cowbell in an orchestra, they vibrate through a loop suspension. Such hand clocks are more suitable for funeral processions and wake ceremonies, an ancient and universal ritual based on the belief that the sound of hand clocks protects the souls of the dead. Bronze casted hand clocks, with better resonance, were used for religious ceremonies in Italian churches from the 4th century AD until the 8th century or even later. At present, it seems that the hand clock as an instrument to summon the spirit of the ceremony, its appearance long before the bell tower ringing.

In Western Europe, hand clocks first appeared in music manuscripts from the 13th century. In some musical works of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, hand clocks were often used by singers and instrumentalists, but there was no explicit notation. Because hand clocks have a brighter tone, they often appear in cheerful parades and play an irreplaceable role. From the 20th century, hand clocks were usually mounted on a frame and played by a single person with a mallet. In this period, there were hand clocks with different pitches, which were played by one or more people in combination. (1)

Since ancient times, because of the mysterious and ethereal sound characteristics of hand clocks, they are often used in religious music as rattles, and are often used in ritual accompaniment music. Hand clocks at that time were mostly noise instruments and did not have harmonic pitches.

Second, the evolution trend of musical hand clock

The modern hand clock with harmonic pitch was first produced in England in the 17th century, and it is composed of a directional hammer, a belt handle and a bronze cast body. In the urban areas of England at that time, hand clocks were considered by percussion players as a practice instrument for band rehearsals.

2.1 Prevalence of circulation

The hand-clock movement reached its climax in the mid-18th century, when the playing of hand-clocks became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in England, and almost every village had its own hand-clock band. In particular, in Yorkshire and Lancashire in the north of England, there are more than 200 hand clock bands, and hand clock competitions are held regularly every year, and the types of songs played have expanded to opera, chorus and pop music, etc., and the First World War made this era gradually weakened and eventually ended. Founded in 1884, the Scottish St James Ringers Orchestra is one of the oldest hand clock orchestras in the UK, and they still retain the habit of playing hand clocks of this period. (2)

At the same time, the Lancashire Ringers were one of the best bands of their time, and when the American music producer P.T. Brannum heard them play in the late 1840s, he immediately invited them to play in the United States. In addition, to highlight their exotic appearance, Barnum specially named them “Suiss Bell Ringers” (Swiss bell makers) and dressed them in Swiss clothing. Because of this, they became one of the most popular bands in the Chautauqua movement and touring in the United States at the time. In 1863, the Ringers embarked on an eight-year tour of Australia, after which they went on to perform in India.

2.2 Refinement of performance

In the early 20th century, Margaret Shulcliff revived the popularity of hand clocks in New England, forming more than a dozen novice clock bands and founding the first hand clock Society in 1937. In the 1940s, the use of hand clocks in religious ceremonies increased, making them popular, and the American Hand Clock Association was formally established in 1954.

By the beginning of the 21st century, outside of the UK, hand bells sounded little different than they had a century earlier, and scales of three to five octaves were common, with full seven-octave scales occasionally occurring. Community, church, and school choirs are mostly capable of professional musical skills. In the performance of the hand clock, the playing techniques are gradually developed, such as various types of pauses, percussion, pizzicato, trill, etc., to enrich the sound effect of the hand clock band.

2.3 Technological innovation

In 1902, under the patronage of Margaret Nichols of Boston, English hand clocks gradually became an integral part of American musical life. She imported eight Whitechapel hand clocks from England, and continued to improve and expand the size of the set and promote it in the United States. Since the 1970s, a new industry has emerged in the United States featuring a large number of hand-clock instruments and music.

Before 1955, most hand clocks were produced by the White Church Hand Clock Foundry in the United Kingdom. After this, the Dutch Bell Company, founded in 1660, also gradually invested in the production of hand clocks. In 1963, the Schulmerich Company was founded in the United States and mass-produced hand clocks, and in 1974, the Marmack Company was founded. Since both are located in Pennsylvania, the United States, the production era of hand clocks in the United States came. (to be continued)

Sound is the soul of a musical instrument, in which the timbre and intensity of the musical instrument are determined by the production material, and the pitch is determined by the shape of the vocal body. At the same time, tuning, as an irreplaceable important step in the process of Musical Instruments, has a significant impact on its pitch.

3.1 Innovation of materials

One of the few early American hand clock makers, Roland Melan of Brooklyn, used a unique nickel-plated alloy instead of the usual metal castings.

In 1974, Schurmerich’s hand clock designer Jacob Maltese opened his own hand clock company called Marmack. The material he used to cast the bell was 80% copper and 20% tin, heated to 2150 degrees of fusion. This material is hard and brittle, which is the key to support the high frequency vibration of the hand clock. At the same time, Marmark is also the only inventor to use aluminum metal to cast hand clocks, and before this, most of the hand clocks were cast by bronze, and the bass of the large bronze hand clock weight is very heavy, Malta in 1990 designed a new aluminum bass hand clock and applied for a patent, to a certain extent to solve the weight problem.

In addition to the light weight, the aluminum hand clock (see Figure 7) can also present the sound characteristics of strong pitch and weak high-frequency harmonic. This is due to the fact that compared with bronze, aluminum has the advantage of faster sound transmission in the low frequency domain and relatively slower in the high frequency domain. (3)

Figure 7 Aluminum hand clock

3.2 The core of sound

The bell’s fine control is crucial to the presentation of its sound, as it has an important effect on the relative frequency of the offset. In the early process of bell casting, the bell body is not accurate, although most of them are cast by mold, but these prototype castings need to be carefully polished, tuned, and eventually become a beautiful instrument.

As an indispensable and important step in the process of clock casting, tuning determines the pitch and sound presentation of the clock. The tuning of the clock has two purposes: one is to make the pitch of the clock match the set pitch, or coordinate with the pitch of the complete set of bells, which is the external tone; The second is to coordinate the pitch spectrum of the clock with each other, which is the internal tone. To adjust the pitch of the clock is to adjust the shape and thickness of the inner wall of the clock body. The inner wall metal is polished by the lathe through the rotation of the clock body and the tool attached to the vertical column, and then the pitch frequency is measured. In the early days, the tuning was performed by traditional tapping the tuning fork, and now the electronic tuner is basically used for debugging.

3.3 Essence of the process

Similarly, as a plate vibrating instrument, the tuning mode of hand clock is similar to that of general bell instruments. In the process of casting the hand clock, the cutting tool is controlled by the stylus on the template in order to obtain the precise outline of the clock body after the external shape of the original casting has been determined. Next, the hammer position is tuned inside the clock body. In the tuning process of the hand clock, the hammer inside the clock body is also the key part of its attention, the hanging tightness of the hammer and the striking position are also part of the factors that affect the pitch. Tuning a hand clock requires knowledge, skill and experience, and manipulating the tool to make the parts of the hand clock perfectly aligned and produce precise pitch is the hallmark of a qualified clockmaker.

After each cut bell, the lathe is stopped, the bell is struck, the vibration frequency is displayed on the tuner, and the allowed accuracy error is no more than 1/100 semitone offset value. After this, the body of the clock is polished and finally tuned. The precise tuning of the hand clock is achieved in the process of polishing, first polishing its interior and then polishing its exterior. Secondly, the assembly of the hand clock is carried out according to the best sound response point obtained in the tuning process, and each part is fixed through the best position marked, and finally forms a complete sound and mechanical hand clock, and matches with other hand clocks in the combination.

At the same time, because the thickness is an important parameter to be considered in the tuning process of hand clocks, it is difficult to perform secondary tuning. In an ensemble with a hand clock, other instruments must be adapted to the hand clock. In addition, the tuning of the hand clock will also take into account the listening habits of the human ear, and the sound adjustment will be made according to the instrument with which it is matched, so as to avoid some disharmonious harmonies as much as possible.

Iv. Contemporary stage of hand clock

4.1 Internationalization

At present, the hand clock in the world has gradually received attention and promotion. The World Hand Clock Congress (④), as an official international conference, has played an important role in promoting hand clocks while bringing together hand clock lovers from all over the world for exchange. The conference is held every two years in a different country and is hosted by six rotating countries: the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada and Australia. Hong Kong, as the earliest representative region in China to incorporate handbells into music teaching, was also announced as the seventh host country of the World Handbell Congress in 2011 in Osaka, Japan, and will hold the 19th World Handbell Congress in 2020.

At the same time, the International Hand Clock Award is awarded by the International Hand Clock Committee to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to international development and hand clock performance, and the award is also awarded to improve the level of music teaching of the hand clock instrument, and make it widely disseminated and applied internationally through musical works.

4.2 Specialization

In Europe and The United States, hand clock bands are more common, such as the well-known American Raleigh Ringers (The Raleigh Ringers) has the most hand-bell group, good at using sacred music, pop music and other musical styles, has toured in 34 states in the United States; Ring of Fire, a bell band from the Pacific Northwest, has performed at schools, churches, charity events, and NBA games.

Figure 8 Raleigh Hand Clock Band performance scene At present, the understanding of hand clocks in our country is not widespread enough, only in Hong Kong, there is the use of hand clocks in music education, and there are also performance groups formed to promote hand clocks. For example, the Eleventh Note Band, named after its formation by 11 handbells enthusiasts, is a registered non-profit making handbell performing group in Hong Kong. At present, there are 21 members, all of whom are primary school music teachers and hand-cranking music educators; Founded in 1996, the White Hand Band is Hong Kong’s first independent handbell band. All members have received professional music training to promote the art of hand-bell. (5)

4.3 Branding

After the hand-clock has been passed down and improved, its production tends to scale and the market presents a brand situation. At present, the world’s four major hand clock manufacturers are: Japan’s Suzuki instrument brand, the United States Malmark hand clock brand, the United States Schulmerich hand clock brand and the United Kingdom’s White Chapel hand clock brand.

Each brand has its own characteristics. Among them, the Schulmerich brand hand clock has the largest scale and a long history. The hand clock is roughly divided into bronze and brass materials (see Figure 5). The Marmark brand hand clock is currently selling more, and its materials are made of bronze and aluminum; White church hand clock is the oldest hand clock brand, and its materials mainly include silver and gold series (see Figure 6); The Suzuki musical instrument brand mainly produces and sells a series of music teaching AIDS such as organ, recorder and hand clock. Among them, the professional performance grade hand clock is expensive. The hand clock, as a music teaching aid, is less popular in music education in our country.

Figure 9 Schulmerich brand hand clock

Figure 10 White Church brand hand clock

Nowadays, more and more composers like to introduce new elements into their works, and they love the unique timbre of hand clocks. Therefore, hand clock music has gradually become popular and welcomed by music lovers around the world. In addition, hand clocks are often used in music education and music therapy, and have always had a place in liturgical music performance.

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