16-bell music has been a fairly recent recording project for us. It’s been an exciting challenge to put together some new demonstration videos.
Holy, Holy, Holy is our latest arrangement for sixteen handbells. We enjoyed recording this piece as a duet project, and we love how pretty the snow looks in the background!
This arrangement is straightforward to play, and contains no bell changes and no accidentals to pick up mid-piece. There are no techniques that require tables, so it’s suitable for a socially-distanced group to play from music stands.
If you’d like to play Holy, Holy, Holy, 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, please let us know, and we’ll see what we can do!
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, so 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.
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 do what we can to help!
It’s the time of year when we like to look back at our handbell performances during the busy run-up to Christmas. We’re talking about a very different kind of holiday season!
Our busiest time of the year usually begins in late November and continues all through December. In past years, there have been weeks when we’ve felt as though we hardly seen our home during the run-up to Christmas! However, in recent months, churches have been holding services online, and community groups have been unable to meet in person. Senior communities have been closed to visitors, and company Christmas events were canceled. It seemed that no one was having holiday parties or booking musicians for performances this winter.
So, what did we do during this unusually quiet holiday season?
We are very fortunate to have been able to make handbell music together in recent months. It’s true that the COVID-19 situation had a dramatic effect on our handbell performance opportunities. However, we were still able to write and play music as a handbell duo, and we’re thankful for that. We took the opportunity to play and record some of our 12- and 16-bell music. It was a new adventure for us, and we were pleased with how several of the videos turned out. Here’s The First Nowell:
Continuing a holiday tradition
One of our favorite regular holiday performance venues is the Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland. It’s an outdoor, European-style Christmas market, and we were happy that the event could still take place this year. We gave two evening performances at the Kerstmarkt, and enjoyed it as much as ever, in spite of the chilly weather!
Virtual performances
For one of our performances this December, we took a virtual trip to Colorado! A Denver-based community group asked us to prepare an online handbell program for their holiday gathering. We gave this event a lot of thought, and decided that it would be too risky to give a “live” performance on Zoom. We occasionally have issues with our internet connection, and couldn’t be certain how well the tone of our handbells would come across online.
To solve this problem, we recorded the program beforehand and uploaded it as a YouTube video for the group to watch. We soon discovered how much more stressful it is to introduce a handbell performance when you’re talking to a camera instead of a real audience! Here we are, by the Christmas tree, trying failing to talk without looking awkward:
On the evening of the virtual performance, we joined the group in a Zoom question-and-answer session. It was a good way to share our music with a far-away group, and we’d definitely consider doing something similar again.
Christmas concerts
We had fun putting together some online performances for the Kalamazoo Ringers’ Home for Christmas virtual concert. Carla produced the video for the group, combining recordings from last year’s Christmas Traditions concert with some new performances. These new performances were by several small ensembles and a soloist. Here’s our lively arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High, with Martha and Gary Matthews on flute and piano:
We also spent some time putting together our own Christmas handbell duet concert. We’d recorded the 6- and 8-bell music in late October, at our summer cottage at Bay View in northern Michigan. The cottage was seriously cold at the time! We showed some photos taken during the snowy months, when the Victorian cottages at Bay View are closed up for the winter. Lake Michigan is breathtakingly beautiful when it’s covered in ice!
In-person performances
We received a fairly last-minute invitation to play at the Burcham Hills Festival of Lights in East Lansing. This it turned out to be a very festive evening! The event was totally contactless, with families driving through in their cars, stopping to meet Santa and listen to our Christmas music. The organizers had made great efforts to keep this community event safe for everyone. We played our handbell duets on two consecutive evenings – and yes, it was cold! The Christmas lights twinkled in the darkness, and people seemed to enjoy the festivities.
A busy month at church
While Carla was busy editing concert videos, Larry had a busy month as a cantor/music mixer for our church’s online worship services. We made videos of our handbell duets for Advent and Christmas services, and took part in an online Christmas Eve concert with other musicians from the church. Just before Christmas, we recorded a brand-new arrangement of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing with Linda Strouf. Linda mastered the interesting piano part after a very short rehearsal time! You can find the video on our Facebook page.
On the Sunday after Christmas Day, we went to South Haven First United Methodist Church to play some carols there. We recorded some handbell music in the sanctuary, ready for the service to be broadcast later in the day. We appreciated this final opportunity to share some of our Christmas music before putting away the carols for a while.
All in all, it was a very quiet holiday season for us. In some ways, we missed the usual flurry of activity. However, we did enjoy the opportunity to take December a little more calmly. A huge bonus was being able to enjoy so many of the online handbell concerts posted by groups across the world. We watched handbell performances by groups we’d never usually have the opportunity to see. Many small ensembles performed Choraegus handbell music this holiday season, and we were thankful for that too.
Looking ahead to 2021
What will 2021 look like for handbell performances and live music events? It’s too early to say! We hope that at some point in the coming months, we’ll be able to share our music with in-person audiences again. In the meantime, our thanks go to everyone who invited us to be part of their masked-and-socially-distant 2020 holiday events!
Our online Christmas handbell concert is ready to watch! We’re happy to bring you our 2020 concert – recorded at our summer cottage in Bay View, Michigan. Watch the concert to see and hear some of our favorite holiday 8-bell duets, enjoy some photos of Bay View in the winter, and grab the opportunity to download a brand-new Christmas carol for 8 bells and piano – free of charge until Christmas Day 2020!
The following handbell duets are featured in this concert:
Creator of the Stars of Night Hills of the North, Rejoice The Cherry Tree Carol Angels from the Realms of Glory Silent Night ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came I Saw Three Ships O Come, O Come, Emmanuel De Zak van Sinterklaas Away in a Manger (Cradle Song) Away in a Manger (Murray) In the Bleak Midwinter Angels We Have Heard on High Hoe Leit dit Kindeke Jingle Bells and FREE MUSIC OPPORTUNITY!
All of the 6- and 8-bell pieces featured in our concert are available to purchase and download from Choraegus, our music site. If you enjoyed our Christmas concert, please feel welcome to share the video with your family and friends as we celebrate the Christmas season with handbell music!
If you have any questions for us, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
Here’s another demonstration video of a 12-bell piece – Away in a Manger.
We recorded this video in the same way as we made our other recent 12- and 16-bell projects – in two separate parts. This arrangement has no bell-sharing, no accidentals, and no need for tables, which makes it particularly suitable for a small group of socially-distanced musicians. It could be played by 3-6 ringers, using spaced-apart music stands, and two versions are available – either using bells C5-G6 (as in our demo video), or using F5-C7.
Would you like to play this piece?
If you’d like to play Away in a Manger, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to six copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Your purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to 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 music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs, so 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 answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
Here’s another demonstration video of a 12-bell piece – Angels from the Realms of Glory.
This video was recorded in the same way as our other recent 12- and 16-bell projects – in two separate parts. We recorded this video in the evening – half just before dark, and half just after, as you can see from the two sides of the recording!
This arrangement has no bell-sharing and no accidentals, making it particularly suitable for a small group of socially-distanced musicians. There’s no need for tables, so the arrangement can be played by 3-6 ringers using spaced-apart music stands. Two versions are available – either using bells C5-G6 (as in our demo video), or using F5-C7.
If you’d like to play Angels from the Realms of Glory, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to six copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to 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 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.
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!
The First Nowell is our newest recording project. We recently put together a video of our 12-bell arrangement of the Christmas Carol As With Gladness Men of Old. This went well, so we were encouraged to attempt a 16-bell arrangement!
We chose The First Nowell, and this is the finished product:
How we made our “clone” video
We’ve been impressed by the creative video-editing we’ve seen from various handbell musicians in recent months. Our way of making this video was fairly low-tech in comparison! As there are only two of us, we knew we’d have to record the piece in two halves. First, we looked at the music score together and decided which two sets of bells were the most likely to cover most of the notes without breaks. Our aim was to keep the piece at a steady tempo. For this piece, we recorded the middle eight bells first.
The initial recording went very well, and we were able to use our first attempt at recording the middle eight bells. Next, we downloaded the video/music file from the camera card. When it was safely downloaded onto a laptop, we replayed the audio track at a low volume. We played the lowest-four and highest-four bells along with the track. Using this method meant that we didn’t need to use headphones/earbuds. It took us three attempts to play the outside pairs of bells all the way through without any trip-ups, but we got there eventually!
The two videos were then put together “side by side” in iMovie.
This has proved to be a really interesting experience for us! We have a pile of 12- and 16-bell music waiting to be recorded, so we’re planning to make a lot more of these videos. It will be a good use of our time at home, since our Christmas performance calendar is looking rather empty!
Would you like to play The First Nowell?
If you’d like to play The First Nowell, you can download the sheet music from Choraegus. Two versions are available – each for a different range of bells. We played the C5-D7 version, but it’s also available in the range Bb4-C7. The arrangement needs no bell-sharing or picking-up of accidentals during the piece, and no techniques requiring tables. For this reason, it’s particularly suitable for a small group of socially-distanced musicians using music stands.
Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to eight copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. 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 music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs, so 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.
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 answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
Yay for handbell duets! 2020 has been a challenging year for us, as far as handbell performances are concerned. Larry had shoulder surgery in May, so we initially couldn’t accept any performance bookings for the spring or summer months. Larry eventually recovered enough for us to start playing duets again. However, all the events where we might have played had been cancelled by then! Our summer duet “performances” mostly took place on the porch at our summer cottage in Bay View. Instead, we focused mainly on writing and rehearsing new music.
We eventually had an opportunity to give a duet performance in September. We presented an outdoor handbell program for members of the local branch of the American Guild of Organists. Since then, our booking calendar has been a bleak wasteland… until today, a long-awaited Sunday, when we took our bells to Muskegon for our second visit to Central United Methodist Church.
Playing for an online worship service
This is such a beautiful church to play handbells in! We were initially planning for a socially-distanced in-person worship service today. However, COVID-19 cases have been increasing here in Michigan, so the church wisely made the decision to broadcast the service online instead.
Even though the congregation was an online one this morning, we enjoyed being able to share our music during worship again. Our thanks go to all at Central United Methodist church for the warm welcome we received. We hope it won’t be too long before we’ll be able to go back and play handbells again for an in-person congregation!
Do you need handbell music in your church?
If you’d like us to come to your church and share our handbell music in worship, please get in touch with us!
Our latest hymn arrangement is an eight-bell arrangement of O Give the Lord Wholehearted Praise – the hymn tune GERMANY. We recorded the video earlier this month, at our summer cottage near Petoskey. This arrangement is straightforward to play, and suitable for a trio or duet. There’s no bell-sharing, no picking-up of accidentals during the piece, and no need for tables, which makes this arrangement particularly suitable for a small group of socially-distanced musicians.
How to get the sheet music
If you’d like to play O Give the Lord Wholehearted Praise, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials.
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs, so 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 answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
“For all the saints who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia! Alleluia!”
By special request, here’s an accompanied 8-bell arrangement of For All the Saints. With the much-loved hymn tune Sine Nomine, written by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1906, this is a popular choice for All Saints’ Day on November 1st. Our demonstration video was recorded at our Victorian summer cottage at Bay View, Petoskey, on a chilly October Sunday, with rain pelting down outside.
As with all our 8-bell arrangements, this piece involves no bell changes, no picking-up of accidentals, and no shared bells. There’s no need for tables, making it suitable for a socially-distanced handbell group, playing from music stands.
Information about downloadable music from Choraegus
If you’d like to play For All the Saints, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus, our music site. We also have an mp3 file available to purchase separately; useful if you don’t have an available accompanist, or for rehearsal purposes.
Please 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 an 8-bell arrangement allows you to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group (plus the accompaniment score). Purchase also gives permission for recording, broadcasting, live-streaming and sharing on video-sharing sites, church websites and social media. See our licensing agreement for full details, and please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites and social media, and in any printed materials such as church service bulletins.
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 answer you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
The Bay View Memorial Garden, near Petoskey, Michigan
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come… to Michigan! We love this time of year, when the leaves turn to all shades of red, orange, yellow and brown, and the weather starts to feel colder. Pumpkin spice is in the air (well, all over Facebook, anyway). Our thoughts turn to harvest festivals and Halloween, and Thanksgiving is fast approaching.
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come is our latest arrangement for eight bells and piano. We recorded the video at our Victorian summer cottage at Bay View, Petoskey, where we’ve been spending a lot of time in recent months. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the sound of cars going past on US-31 – and that’s why we don’t usually record our demo videos while we’re there!
As with all our 8-bell arrangements, this piece involves no bell changes, no picking-up of accidentals mid-piece, and no shared bells. It can be played from just music stands, which makes it suitable even for socially-distanced handbell groups.
If you’d like to play Come, Ye Thankful People, Come, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus, our music site. An mp3 accompaniment track is also available to purchase separately. This is useful if you don’t have a willing accompanist, or if you want to rehearse at home.
More information about Choraegus handbell music
Please 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 an 8-bell arrangement allows you to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group (plus the accompaniment score). Purchase also gives permission for recording, broadcasting, live-streaming and online video-sharing. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on when sharing online, and in any 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. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll be happy to help!
