April 5, 2021

The Heavens Declare Your Glory – for Handbells

“The heavens declare your glory, the firmament your power;
day unto day the story repeats from hour to hour.
Night unto night replying, proclaims in every land,
O LORD, with voice undying, the wonders of your hand.“

The Heavens Declare Your Glory is the hymn tune FAITHFUL, written by J.S. Bach. We enjoyed putting together this arrangement for 3-5 octaves of handbells! With lots of opportunity for mallets in the bass, a lively beginning and ending, and a thoughtful and contemplative middle section, there’s plenty in this piece to keep your ringers and audience entertained!

How to get the music, and more information about Choraegus

The Heavens Declare Your Glory is a Level 3 arrangement, for 3-5 octaves of handbells. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

When you buy handbell music from Choraegus, the music score 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. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment (for the full-choir copy) entitles you to print up to 15 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full information about this. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide, which we designed to take you through the process in a stress-free way!

Purchasing this 3-5 octave arrangement gives you no-fuss permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and online video-sharing, as part of a performance or worship service.

Any questions about buying or playing our music?

If you have any questions for us, please look at the Frequently-Asked Questions first, in case the answer is there. If you don’t find the information you’re looking for, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

The Heavens Declare Your Glory handbells

March 31, 2021

Kingsfold – for Handbells, 3-5 Octaves

Kingsfold is a folk tune that’s thought to date back to the Middle Ages. It’s a tune used for a variety of texts, both sacred and secular. As a folk song, you might know it as Dives and Lazarus or The Star of the County Down. In worship, it’s sung as the popular hymn I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, and also as When Jesus Walked Upon This Earth. For Christmas, it’s the setting for O Sing a Song of Bethlehem. Our arrangement of Kingsfold for handbells and optional handchimes is a very versatile piece!

We enjoyed putting this video together. Playing 3-5 octave music has been a good way to keep up our ringing skills during a time when duet performances haven’t really been happening. The urge to rehearse for events that aren’t taking place… well, it just isn’t there. So these “full choir” videos have been a fun alternative for us!

More information about Kingsfold

Kingsfold is for 3-5 octaves of handbells, with optional 2-octave handchimes. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

When you buy Choraegus handbell music, the music score 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. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment entitles you to print up to 15 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full information. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide, which we designed to take you through the process in a stress-free way!

Other versions of this piece

An unaccompanied arrangement for 8 handbells

An arrangement for 6 handbells and piano

Any questions?

If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, please look at the Frequently-Asked Questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

March 29, 2021

Vårvindar Friska – Handbell Music for 3-5 Octaves

Vårvindar Friska (Fresh Spring Winds) is a traditional Swedish folk song celebrating the coming of spring. The tune is also used for the hymns Breath of the Living God and O Living Breath of God.

We’ve had this arrangement since 2018, but it took a COVID-19 pandemic to give us the idea of recording some of our 3-5 octave pieces with just the two of us! This one has probably been our favorite, so far. It’s light and breezy, and just skips along. We enjoyed playing it so much that we’re already making plans to try the 5-octave version too!

More information about the music

Vårvindar Friska is for 3-5 octaves of handbells. The sheet music is available to download from Choraegus. It’s versatile enough to be played as part of a worship service, or performed in a spring or summer concert.

When you buy Choraegus handbell music, please note that it 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. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment entitles you to print out up to 15 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full information. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide!

Any questions?

March 25, 2021

Fairest Lord Jesus / Beautiful Savior – for Handbells (3-5 Octaves)

“Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown

Fairest Lord Jesus is a popular Christian hymn, also sung as Beautiful Savior. We enjoyed putting this video together with just the two of us. Again, it was an opportunity to test our sight-reading skills. The last year has been a quiet one for us, performance-wise, and this video-recording project has certainly kept us busy!

More information about the music

Fairest Lord Jesus is for 3-5 octaves of handbells, with optional 2-octave handchimes. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

Any questions?

Fairest Lord Jesus Beautiful Savior handbells

March 22, 2021

Day By Day – for Handbells, 3 or 5 octaves

“Day by day and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure
Gives unto each day what he deems best–
Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.”

Day By Day is our most recent recording project with just the two of us. It’s been fun to record these videos, and very good practise for our sight-reading skills. We haven’t been rehearsing beforehand; we just pick up the bells and play, and see what happens. Sometimes we’ll get it right on our first attempt, and sometimes not… but it’s never boring! There may be minor inaccuracies, but it’s all part of the fun.

More information about the music

The original hymn BLOTT EN DAG was written in Swedish by Carolina Sandell-Berg in 1865, and the tune was composed in 1872 by Oscar Ahnfelt. This hymn arrangement is for 3 or 5 octaves of handbells, with optional handchimes. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

When you buy Choraegus handbell music, please note that it will come to you as a PDF file. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music scores, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment entitles you to print up to 15 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full information. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide, which we designed to take you through the process in a stress-free way!

Any questions?

February 24, 2021

All Things Bright and Beautiful – for Handbells

In these Covid times, when we can’t get together with others to play full-choir handbell music, we’re having to improvise a bit. We decided to put together another 3-octave demonstration video – so here’s All Things Bright and Beautiful!

As with our other “fake-full-choir” recordings (All Praise to Thee, for Thou, O King Divine and Newness), this was more of a read-through than a pre-rehearsed performance. It felt like a bit of a crazy sight-read, because some of those notes go past very quickly, and there are some sneaky thumb-damps in there, as well as a fair amount of syncopation. It certainly kept us on our toes! We apologise for the minor inaccuracies, but it’s mostly there.

The video includes some images from the Tulip Time Festival here in Holland – an event that takes place annually at the start of May.

More about this arrangement

This is another arrangement that needs no bell-sharing between ringers. If your handbell choir is observing social distancing, and playing from spaced-apart tables, this piece could work well!

All Things Bright and Beautiful is arranged for 3 or 5 octaves of handbells, and it’s Level 3+. The sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

More information about buying Choraegus handbell music

Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded as a PDF file. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment entitles you to print out up to 15 copies for your group. Please read our licensing agreement for full information. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide!

Any questions?

All Things Bright and Beautiful - tulips

February 17, 2021

Larry’s Radiation Treatment is Finished!

We’re (cautiously) celebrating the end of Larry’s radiation treatment for prostate cancer recurrence! Over the last four weeks, Larry has had 20 sessions of radiation therapy at the University of Michigan Hospital. He drove us to Ann Arbor and back, from our home in Holland, every day, Monday to Friday. It came to a total of 6,552 miles!

The Michigan winter weather certainly made our daily road-trips an interesting experience. We knew it might be risky, driving 3 hours to the hospital, and 3 hours back, in January and February. There were mornings when visibility was very poor!

The amazing thing was how quickly the daily road-trips became routine for us. It didn’t take us long to get used to waking up in the morning, making lunch to take with us, and getting into the car. We looked out for sights along the way; little things to make us smile. Daily road-trips for cancer radiation could so easily become stressful, miserable experiences — so we appreciated the silly things – like graffiti at the rest stop near Ann Arbor…

… and “look, surely an illusionist!” – who, it turns out, is really a dentist:

illusionist... or dentist? — Yup. Free advertising for Dr West of Battle Creek, who made us smile on our way home every day.

Most days, we stretched our legs with a short walk in Bandemer Park in Ann Arbor, after the radiation session was done. The weather in Ann Arbor was consistently brighter than the weather in Holland – and we were blessed with several days of blue skies, to walk by the river and enjoy the beauty of the snow and ice.

Larry's radiation treatment - walking by the river

What happens next? Did the radiation treatment work?

Larry’s cancer treatment isn’t over yet. He’ll continue to have monthly injections until June, and more blood tests. There will be appointments with the oncologists in Wyoming (Michigan) and (online) in Ann Arbor. It will be some months before we find out if the combination of radiation and monthly injections have been successful.

If you’ve ever heard prostate cancer described as “the good cancer”, it’s not true. This cancer is sneaky, and has a tendency to return, over and over. We put our faith in God, and in the University of Michigan doctors, and hope for the best. We also hope that our insurance will eventually agree to help with the cost of the radiation therapy. They decided unexpectedly (on Day 13) to deny Larry the treatment, and that came as a shock to us. We’re fast discovering that the cost of having cancer treatment here in the USA can be overwhelming and scary.

Thank you to everyone who’s helped and encouraged us through this!

Our thanks go to the cancer team at the University of Michigan, for taking good care of Larry. We’re also thankful to everyone who’s encouraged us in this latest “adventure”. To the people who have sent us cards, and prayed for us – thank you. We’re grateful to the friends who offered us emergency accommodation if we’d needed it. It helped to know that staying overnight would have been possible if the weather had been too terrible. Thanks also to the Detroit Handbell Ensemble for the gift that paid for one of our road-trips, and to the choir at Third Reformed Church for the huge plant that unexpectedly took up residence in our house this week!

Thanks also to our Kalamazoo Ringers family. We appreciated the generous gift that helped with the last week of our road-trips, and the personal gifts, cards and good wishes that helped us so much. And thanks to our friends on our Facebook page, who commented with kind words, and put up with oh-so-much talk about our daily road-trips. We love and appreciate you all.

Larry's radiation treatment — Larry with his certificate!

February 4, 2021

All Praise to Thee, For Thou, O King Divine

All Praise to Thee, For Thou, O King Divine was a new recording adventure for us! In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been making daily road-trips (Monday-Friday) between Holland and Ann Arbor for Larry’s radiation treatment. Spending more than 6 hours a day in the car definitely makes us appreciate our weekends!

What better way to spend a weekend than making a recording of one of Larry’s full choir arrangements? We decided on All Praise to Thee, because it’s such a versatile hymn. We’ve sung it as When in Our Music God is Glorified (with words by Fred Pratt Green, © 1972 Hope Publishing), and it’s also the setting for We Know that Christ is Raised and Dies No More. If your church holds Music Appreciation Sunday, this piece would be ideal. It would also be suitable for Easter services, as well as year-round.

Here’s our video. Please be warned; this was very much a read-through. If we’d taken time to rehearse, it would have looked and sounded smoother, but… well, the weekend was too short!

As you can see from the video, this arrangement has no bell-sharing between ringers. If your handbell choir is observing social distancing, and playing from spaced-apart tables, this piece could work well!

Where to find the sheet music

All Praise to Thee, for Thou, O King Divine is written for 3-5 octaves of handbells, with an octave of (optional) chimes. The sheet music is available to download from Choraegus.

Any questions?

January 21, 2021

Come, Thou Almighty King – 16-Bell Music

Come, Thou Almighty King is our newest arrangement for sixteen handbells. We received a request for this piece, and recorded the demonstration video after Larry came back from his first radiation treatment. It’s more of a read-through than a performance, but you should get the idea of how the piece could sound with the benefit of more rehearsal time!

Come, Thou Almighty King is sung to the ITALIAN HYMN tune, written in 1769. This arrangement is the most straightforward (so far) of all our 16-bell arrangements. It contains no bell changes, and needs no bell-sharing. There are no techniques that require tables. Up to 8 ringers could play it from music stands, even with social distancing.

If you’d like to play Come, Thou Almighty King, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. Other 16-bell music is also available. If you don’t see the title you’re looking for, you’re always welcome to suggest a piece you’d like to play. Larry is writing new music all the time!

More information (the small print)

Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to eight copies for your handbell group. Don’t pay for more copies than you need! Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. In addition, please mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs.

Please note that our sheet 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.

If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide, designed 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. Please contact us if you don’t find the information you need, and we’ll be happy to help!

January 18, 2021

Larry’s Prostate Cancer – the Next Chapter

Some of you may remember that Larry had prostate surgery at the beginning of 2019. We originally had high hopes that the surgery would be the end of Larry’s prostate cancer. Towards the end of 2019, we were told that Larry was cancer-free, and we celebrated.

However, things changed in late December 2019, when one of Larry’s routine blood tests came back with a worrying result. Hoping it was just a blip, he did another test, and the result was worse. We were referred to a local radiation oncologist here in Holland, and told that there was a high probability that the cancer had returned.

Prostate cancer can hide for a long time!

The problem with prostate cancer recurrence is that it’s not always easy to know where the cancer is hiding. After a couple more blood tests, the radiation oncologist referred Larry for an Axumin PET scan in Grand Rapids at the beginning of May. However, here in the USA, it often seems that medical treatment is decided not so much by the doctors as by the insurance companies. Our health insurance company refused to approve the PET scan, so the appointment was cancelled. We were very disappointed, but focused on Larry’s shoulder surgery, which had been scheduled for May.

Last summer, as he recovered from shoulder surgery, Larry had more tests. He had a bone scan, an MRI, a kidney ultrasound, and a renal nuclear scan. None of those tests showed us where the cancer was hiding. We continued life as normal, as far as we could – driving up to Bay View for days and weekends by the lake, and driving back to Holland for more doctors’ appointments.

Finally, a PET scan!

When summer was over, we were growing anxious that Larry hadn’t started any treatment for his cancer recurrence. We decided to try again to get the much-needed PET scan. After some online searching, we found out that there was a clinical trial of a PSMA PET scan at the University of Michigan hospital. We took a deep breath, contacted the hospital, and asked if Larry qualified for the scan. Our insurance once again refused to cover it, so we were left with no option but to agree to pay the cost ourselves.

At the start of November, we drove to Ann Arbor, where Larry had the PSMA PET scan. Here he is, at the hospital, before the scan – still smiling behind the mask.

Larry's prostate cancer treatment continues

The scan results came back, showing that the cancer had spread to a lymph node. We made an appointment to see an oncologist at the University of Michigan.

Next steps

The next chapter in Larry’s treatment will include radiation at the University of Michigan Hospital. The treatment starts on Tuesday, January 19, and will be Monday-Friday; twenty sessions over four weeks. The hospital is 3 hours away from where we live, and Larry is planning to drive there (and back) every day for as long as it’s possible. We love long road-trips, right?

2020 was not the best of years. You know that already

2020 was a tough year for lots of people, us included. It left us with a ton of stress, a heap of worries, and more medical bills than we know what to do with. However, Larry’s still feeling well. He’s still writing handbell music, singing for online church services, and doing life as normal. We have each other, and friends to cheer us on, and we’re thankful.

Larry will be receiving treatment for the next six months – and by the end of this year, we should know if the treatment has been successful. We appreciate all love, prayers and positive thoughts as we go through this next chapter in our story.