We’ve recently added some more 8-bell wedding ceremony music to our repertoire. These three are all well-known classical pieces.
The first is Mouret’s Rondeau ( Fanfare-Rondeau). Mouret composed this in 1729, as part of his first Suite de Symphonies. This piece is also well-known as the theme from Masterpiece Theatre.
Handel’s Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements from the late 18th century. Handel originally composed the music for orchestra. However, if you only have a few people and 8 handbells, you can play two of the movements: the Bourée and the Air.
Would you like to play these 8-bell arrangements?
If you’d like to play these pieces, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
When you purchase music from Choraegus, the scores come to you as PDF files. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchase of an 8-bell piece entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your handbell group. Please see our licensing agreement for full details.
If you’re buying Choraegus music for the first time, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Would you like to book us to play handbells for your wedding ceremony?
If you’re getting married and you’d like us to play our 8-bell wedding ceremony music for your special day, please contact us and we’ll see if we can make it happen!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, or about booking us to play handbell duets at your event, please contact us!
This week we’re back home in Holland, Michigan, concentrating on getting back to “normal life” after our trip to Petoskey for the 2016 Bay View Week of Handbells.
“What is normal life?”, you may ask. For us, it means unpacking more boxes and finding places to put everything in our new home. It means cutting the grass that grew taller while we were away. Sadly, it also means filing away the music we rehearsed for the Week of Handbells concert. We need to get back into practising our duet music instead!
More about the Week of Handbells
This event takes place every year, in August, at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Michigan. The event was first held in 1978. Donald E. Allured (1922-2011) was the founding director, and the event started with around 30 particpants. Since then, the Week of Handbells has grown! Over a hundred handbell musicians now take part every year.
The current director is Carl Wiltse, who has a long history with the event, going as far back as the very first Bay View Handbell Workshop. Don Allured passed the baton to Carl in 2002.
Maestro Carl Wiltse with his wife Pamela at the 2014 Week of Handbells
As with last year’s event, Fred Gramann assisted Carl in directing. He conducted four pieces in this years concert.
With Fred Gramann at the 2016 Week of Handbells
The Week of Handbells is always a demanding event, both physically and mentally, but the rewards are worth it. We started rehearsals at midday on Monday, and rehearsals continued at 9:00am on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. There was an extra 8:00am session each morning. These were for the super-enthusiastic or anyone who wanted to do additional work on those tricky sections in some of the music.
Some very challenging pieces!
The most-challenging pieces in this year’s repertoire were Michael Mazzatenta’s Allegretto – an entirely malleted piece, with fiendish chromatic passages and unexpected accidentals to catch us out at times, Alex Guebert’s All Creatures of our God and King, which Fred renamed All Meters… for obvious reasons, and Fred’s own Nollirac Carillon, with its many 7/8 passages and the occasional 4/4 or 9/8 thrown in. “Accent, accent… STRONG weak, STRONG weak, STRONG weak weak” quickly became a mantra for many of us during the week!
We were excited to hear Larry’s arrangement of Tico Tico performed in this year’s concert. Even though it’s a challenging piece, rehearsals went pretty smoothly from the very start of the week. A lot of preparation goes on before the event, of course. Participants are meant to come to the event “performance-ready”, having learned their music thoroughly in the weeks and months beforehand. Even though it takes a while to get more than a hundred musicians all playing together as one instrument, that advance preparation really makes all the difference!
The John M Hall Auditorium – a wonderful venue for the Week of Handbells
Our history with the Week of Handbells
We’ve been attending the Bay View Week of Handbells together since 2010. It was the first place where we spent time together “in real life” after meeting online on a website for handbell musicians. We celebrated our engagement there in 2011, and it was also the place we went to after flying from England when Carla’s visa finally came through and we were able to close the distance and start our life together as a couple in the same continent. The exciting difference about this year’s Week of Handbells was that, for the first time, we were able to drive to the event instead of having to fly all the way from California! It was a scenic journey, but it rained heavily for almost the entire trip there, and part of the way back too. Knowing that we now live in Michigan made such a difference to us at the end of this year’s event; the goodbyes at the “farewell breakfast” were less painful when we weren’t facing a long flight and a change of time zone afterwards!
Our favorite handbell event
The Bay View Week of Handbells is by far our favorite handbell event ever, for so many reasons. We get the opportunity to play some great music under the baton of a dedicated and talented director. There’s all the beautiful scenery too. The auditorium is surrounded by pretty cottages, and the lake is just a few moments’ walk away. The event is full of memories for us, and carries great meaning because of the part it played in our relationship journey.
Above all, the Bay View Week of Handbells is a wonderful event because of the people there. Every year we’re reunited with old friends and we meet new ones. We feel as though we’re all part of a big, supportive and happy family. Each individual is welcomed, appreciated and supported. We all encourage each other as we share in the experience of working together to prepare for the Thursday night concert. We’re encouraged to work hard – not only to become the best musicians we can be, but the best people we can be – and we’re already looking forward to doing it all over again in August 2017!
Today is the first day of the 2016 Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ll be spending the next four days playing some great music at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Petoskey, as more than a hundred handbell musicians rehearse together under the direction of Carl Wiltse.
You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our article about the Bay View Week of Handbellsand taking a look at our gallery of photos. This year is the first time we’ve been able to drive to the event – from our new home in Holland, Michigan!
At the end of this week’s rehearsals, there will be a concert, open to the public and free to attend. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 18, 2016 at 8:00pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund.
This year’s concert repertoire:
Processional by Arnold Sherman
Allegretto arr. Michael Mazzatenta
All Creatures of our God and King arr. Alex Guebert
Concerto for Handbells and Organ in Baroque Style by Michael Helman
The Lord Bless you and Keep You by Peter Lutkin (sung; not played)
The performance will be professionally recorded by Pierpont Productions, so if you can’t make it to the concert, you can order a DVD or CD by calling Pierpont Productions on 231-347-4488.
We’ll be posting updates and photos on our Facebook page as the week goes by. We’d love to see you at the concert!
“Twas on a windy night, at two o’clock in the morning, An Irish Lad set out, all wind and weather scorning; Twas on a windy night, at two o’clock in the morning, An Irish Lad set out, all wind and weather scorning; At Judy Callaghan’s door, sitting upon the railing, His love tale he did pour, and this was part of his wailing; Only say, you’ll have Barney Brannigan, Dont say nay, Charming Judy Callaghan. Only say, you’ll have Barney Brannigan, Dont say nay, charming Judy Callaghan.”
Here’s our latest eight-bell piece – it’s a traditional Irish slip jig called Barney Brannigan – also known by several other titles, including Barney Brallaghan, Blewitt’s Jig and Twas on a Windy Night.
This piece is a nice challenge for four-in-hand duet. It is actually fun to play – not that you can tell from our faces in the video!
Would you like to play this arrangement?
If you’d like to play Barney Brannigan, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
When you purchase music from Choraegus, please note the music will come to you as a PDF file. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchase of this 8-bell arrangement entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your handbell group. Please see our licensing agreement for full details.
If you’re unfamiliar with buying music from Choraegus, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our handbell music, please get in touch, and we’ll be happy to help!
We celebrated our recent arrival in Holland, Michigan by spending a couple of hours playing our handbell duets on 8th Street. Thank you to everyone who stopped to listen to our music!
We had fun being street musicians in Holland today!
Downtown Holland is a great place to play music. We arrived armed with a street performers’ permit, and a map of approved locations. After that, it’s just a question of finding a spot along the street where you won’t be in anyone’s way. Then you have to park the car in a location not too far from your chosen performance spot. After that, you simply hope that people will enjoy the music you have to offer. We enjoyed playing our handbell duets in Holland today!
8th Street, where we played handbell duets
You can book us to play handbells at your event!
We had some enquiries about our availability to play our duets at other events. The answer is yes, you can book us to play handbells at your wedding, church service, party, Christmas event, wine-tasting… well, the list goes on. We’re new to West Michigan, so we have lots of dates available in the coming months!
Check out our YouTube channel to see some more of our duets. If you’d like to book us for your event, request a copy of our current fee schedule, or have any questions, please get in touch!
