Here in Holland, Michigan, our city’s 91st annual Tulip Time Festival has been cancelled because of coronavirus. But that doesn’t stop us from playing Dutch music on handbells! Our latest 8-bell arrangement is the traditional song Zeg Kwezelken, Wilde Gij Dansen; a melody written in 1848.
Would you like to play this 8-bell piece?
If you’d like to play Zeg Kwezelken, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus, our music site.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us, especially if this is your first time downloading music from Choraegus. Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group. Purchase also gives you permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and online video-sharing.
If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help!
It’s the time of year when the residents of Holland, Michigan traditionally look forward to the start of the city’s annual Tulip Time Festival. The town displays over 5 million tulips. The city celebrates its Dutch heritage – with parades, music performances and Dutch dancing demonstration.
This year’s 91st Tulip Time Festival has been cancelled because of health concerns for the city’s residents and the hundreds of thousands of visitors who usually flock to the festival. Of course, no one told the tulips, so they will still bloom. Carla took the photo below during the 2019 festival, at Windmill Island Gardens.
Since moving to Holland in the summer of 2016, we’ve enjoyed finding traditional Dutch music that can be played using just 8 handbells. Our latest arrangement is the song Het Roosje, which translates as The Rose.
If you’d like to play this arrangement, you can purchase, download and print the sheet music from Choraegus, our music site.
More information about our downloadable handbell music
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us, especially if this is your first time downloading music from Choraegus. Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and online video-sharing. Please mention the title and arranger of the piece in video descriptions and on printed materials.
If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
While we’ve been under Michigan’s “stay home” order, we’ve enjoyed working on lots of new music to be published on Choraegus. We’ve been disappointed not to be able to give any performances this spring, but thankful that we have bells at home and plenty of music to play! Our most recent piece is a fun little arrangement of the traditional French tune Alouette – for 8 bells.
There’s no obligation to make any other purchase from Choraegus to get the free handbell music. Of course, we hope you’ll take a look at other titles we have to offer, but if you’d rather just grab the free music and go, we don’t mind at all. It’s a good way to try our 8-bell music without having to spend any money! Alouette could be a good piece for practising 4-in-hand as a duet, but could also be played by a (socially-distant?) quartet group.
How to get the music
To get your free sheet music, add it to your cart on the Choraegus site. Next, click on the yellow “Check out with PayPal” button (don’t worry; PayPal won’t ask you to make any payment). Enter your details, and click “Confirm Order” (there’s no need to click on the PayPal button a second time). Then check your email inbox! If the download link doesn’t arrive, check your spam folder, and it might be there. If anything goes wrong, please let us know, and we’ll find another way to get your music to you.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us (or claiming your free music), especially if this is your first time downloading music from Choraegus. You won’t receive anything in the mail, and will be responsible for printing your own music.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
Here’s our latest arrangement for 8 handbells – the popular hymn Song of Hope. The lyrics to this hymn were written by Alvin L. Schutmaat, a Michigan-born missionary to Latin America, and the melody (hymn tune ARGENTINA) is a traditional folk tune.
Song of Hope – recorded when we still had snow on the ground!
“¡Dios de la esperanza, danos gozo y paz! May the God of hope go with us every day, Al mundo en crisis, habla tu verdad. Filling all our lives with love and joy and peace. Dios de la justicia, mándanos tu luz, May the God of justice speed us on our way, Luz y esperanza en la oscuridad. Bringing light and hope to every land and race.”
Larry wrote this 8-bell arrangement for the TRC Ringers at Third Reformed Church here in Holland.
Would you like to play this piece?
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us, especially if this is your first time downloading music from Choraegus. If you’re new to Choraegus handbell music, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group.
Any questions for us?
If you have any questions about purchasing or playing our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help. We hope you’ll enjoy playing our music!
Some 8-bell pieces are very easy to play, requiring little rehearsal time. Gwerzy is not one of those pieces. Colm O’Snodaigh and Dee Armstrong, of the Irish band Kíla, kindly gave us permission to arrange Gwerzy for handbells. It’s fun to play, for anyone who enjoys a bit of a challenge.
We first performed this arrangement in California at the 2019 Bay Area Spring Ring. We announced it to the audience as a work-in-progress. To be honest, it will probably always be a work-in-progress for us! We had originally planned to record a 100%-accurate and polished performance of this piece before offering it for purchase. We’ve now decided to let others join in the fun, without waiting for something that might never happen!
Gwerzy – at the 2019 Bay Area Spring Ring in CaliforniaGwerzy – excerpt
If you’re feeling insane courageous enough to try this arrangement, you’ll find the sheet music to download from Choraegus.
Things to know about Choraegus handbell music
As always, we strongly recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us. Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group.
If you’re new to Choraegus, you might appreciate our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help our customers buy and download music in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
We’re happy to answer questions!
If you have any questions about purchasing or playing our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help. We hope you’ll enjoy playing our music!
“Come, all you people, praise our God and tell his glorious works abroad, who holds our souls in life; he never lets our feet be moved and, though our faith he often proved, upholds us in the strife.“
Here’s the latest addition to our 8-bell repertoire: Come, All You People, Praise Our God. This hymn tune (ODAWA) – by gospel songwriter Charles H. Gabriel – was first published in 1912.
Sheet music is available from Choraegus
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus, our music site.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us. If this is your first time purchasing music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group.
We’re happy to answer your questions!
If you have any questions about purchasing or playing our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help. We hope you’ll enjoy playing our music!
Here’s our new 8-bell arrangement of the hymn At the Cross. The hymn tune is HUDSON, and this one is particularly suitable for Good Friday as well as throughout the church year.
“Alas! and did my Savior bleed And did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head For sinners such as I?
At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, And the burden of my heart rolled away, It was there by faith I received my sight, And now I am happy all the day!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nz8wFlZ4DQ
Sheet music is available from Choraegus
If you’d like to play At the Cross, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus, our music site.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us. If you haven’t downloaded music from Choraegus before, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group.
Other titles for Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter
If you’re looking for the alternative MARTYRDOM hymn tune, we have an eight-bell arrangement of that too. You’ll find it under the title Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.
If you’re interested in other 8-bell music suitable for Lent, Easter and Holy Week, we have a list of other hymn suggestions. Many of these pieces are also available on Choraegus.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
Looking for something a bit unusual for your Christmas handbell performance or worship service? Here’s our latest eight-bell arrangement! It’s a sixteenth-century Flemish carol called De Drie Koningen(The Three Kings). This carol is suitable either for Epiphany or Christmas. We recorded the video last January, before we took down our Christmas tree!
“De Drie Koningen” – recorded in front of our Christmas tree!
Would you like to play this 8-bell piece?
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
If you’re new to buying our music online, we strongly recommend that you read the licensing agreement first. Please note in particular that music from Choraegus is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you’re new to Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this to help you navigate the purchasing process in a stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please look at our Frequently-Asked Questions for more assistance. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Where have the last few weeks gone? We’re only just getting around to writing about our trip to California for the Bay Area Spring Ring!
We visited the San Francisco Bay Area to take part in the Bay Area Spring Ring, an annual event that takes place in Cupertino. In the days before we moved from California to Michigan, Spring Ring was an annual event for us, so we appreciated the opportunity to go back there this year.
This year’s Spring Ring
We flew out of Grand Rapids on the morning of Friday, May 3rd, and arrived in San Jose mid-afternoon. We picked up our rental car there, and drove to Mountain View. This is where we lived until the summer of 2016! We were excited to drive and walk around the city and see the change in the scenery since that time. There’s now a huge apartment complex that towers over the small apartment where we used to live! We had lunch in Mountain View, and marvelled at the sunshine and the lack of humidity in the air. It had clearly been too long since we’d been in the Bay Area!
We arrived in Cupertino and checked into our hotel before rushing off to the first rehearsal at Spring Ring. It was a three-hour Intense Ring rehearsal, directed by guest clinician Nick Hansen. The rehearsal finished at 10:00pm, and our brains and bodies were still convinced it was 1:00am. However, lots of work had been done, and the music was really taking shape.
After a good sleep at the hotel, we returned to Valley Church the following morning for Saturday’s Spring Ring event. It was so much fun to catch up with some of our friends we hadn’t seen for several years! We taught classes on bass handbells and British-style four-in-hand ringing. We also performed a short lunchtime concert of 8-bell duets for the event participants.
Gwerzy – still (and perhaps forever) a work-in-progress!
Spring Ring ended with a public concert, where we played our 8-bell arrangement of To God Be the Glory. We also enjoyed performances from Velocity, Bay Bells and Tintabulations, as well as the massed choirs. The Intense Ring choir played H. Dean Wagner’s arrangement Fantasy on Kingsfold and Nick Hansen’s fun arrangement of And All That Jazz. After a fun and exhausting day, this photo pretty much sums up how we felt:
Larry took a nap during the rehearsal for the final concert!
Sunday morning’s adventures
We started our Sunday with a return visit to Los Altos Lutheran Church, where we played some duets in the morning service. This church (and the Rejoicing Ringers) are very close to our hearts. We played there when we lived in the Bay Area and had the opportunity to work with their handbell choir on several occasions. It was wonderful to return to this church to see our friends there again, and we appreciated the warm welcome we received.
At Los Altos Lutheran Church (Photos: Carl S. Gutekunst)
Our handbell duet concert – All the Way from Holland
Our duet concert was scheduled for 3:00pm at Los Altos Lutheran. We spent so much time chatting with friends after the morning service that we didn’t actually go anywhere else before the concert. Jet-lag was beginning to set in, so we took a quick nap before the audience started to arrive!
It was exciting to see more of our Bay Area friends, and we appreciated that so many people made the effort to come along and listen to our musical offering. The annual Tulip Time festival was taking place in Holland at the time, so we decided to introduce the Bay Area audience to a few traditional Dutch tunes in our afternoon program. We also played some of our favorite hymns and traditional melodies. Here’s Calliope House, our soon-to-be-published eight-bell arrangement of a catchy jig written by Dave Richardson:
Vacation time!
After our handbell events were over, we were able to spend the next couple of days enjoying some vacation time! We visited some of the places we’d always enjoyed when we lived in the Bay Area, including the ruggedly-beautiful coastline at Point Lobos State Park.
Point Lobos State Natural ReserveSibling rivalry? Goslings at Point Lobos
Not surprisingly, there is a distinct shortage of sea lions on the shores of Lake Michigan. We were determined to make time to go to Santa Cruz, walk along the wharf, and get close to some of the sea lions there. It was always one of our favourite things to do when we lived in the Bay Area.
If Larry were a sea lion
During our two days doing tourist stuff in California, we also found time to visit Monterey, Carmel (briefly), Pigeon Point, and Half Moon Bay. Poplar Beach is a great place for a nice walk on a windy day, and a chance to search for sea glass too! We enjoyed reminiscing about our years together in California. We have no regrets about moving away, but sincerely hope it won’t be another three years before we can return for another visit. The Bay Area was where Larry was born, of course. It’s also where we started our life together as a married couple, so it will always have a special place in our hearts.
Together at Poplar Beach, Half Moon Bay
So many thanks to give!
Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who helped make this trip possible for us. Thanks to Handbell Ventures for their generous support – inviting us to be part of this year’s Bay Area Spring Ring, arranging for our travel and accommodation, and finding a location for our Sunday concert. Handbell Ventures is dedicated to promoting the education and enjoyment of handbells in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and you can find out more by visiting their website.
Our love and thanks also go to all at Los Altos Lutheran Church, especially to the Rejoicing Ringers and their director Lynda Alexander, for all their help in hosting our Sunday afternoon concert and providing a wonderful reception afterwards. We’re grateful to Carl and Randy for taking photos and videos of our performances, and to our friends Carol and Bill for welcoming us into their home. Thanks to everyone who came to our concert and helped to support and encourage us. We hope to be back in the Bay Area again soon!
Spring has arrived! Here in Holland, Michigan we must admit that we’re sorry to say goodbye to those snowy winter days. However, we’re looking forward to our city’s annual Tulip Time festival in May!
To put us in the mood for spring, our latest 12-bell arrangement is the popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. This hymn is sung to several different tunes, and the one in our arrangement is the seventeenth-century English melody ROYAL OAK.
Sight-reading on video!
Our thanks go to J.C. for being willing to help us play through some of our recent 12-bell titles during his recent visit to Michigan. We recorded this video on our first read-through, so absolutely no rehearsal went into this, but you’ll get the idea.
Playing this arrangement
As with all our 12-bell pieces, this arrangement is available in two versions. We played C5 to G6 in our video, but there’s also a version for F5 to C7.
If you’d like to play All Things Bright and Beautiful, you can purchase, download and print the sheet music from Choraegus. You need only pay once, and print out up to 6 copies of this 12-bell piece for your handbell choir.
If you haven’t bought music from us before, we’d recommend that you take a look at the licensing agreement and our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide to help you purchase and download our music in a stress-free way!
Looking for music for a full handbell choir?
If you look on the Choraegus site, you’ll also find our arrangement of All Things Bright and Beautiful for 3-5 octave handbell choir.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please check our frequently-asked questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
Tulips in Holland, Michigan – bright and beautiful!
