Here’s a list of 12-bell traditional music, including folk songs and international pieces, available from Choraegus. Click on a title, and you’ll be taken to our music site. There, you’ll find more details about each piece, demonstration videos or audio files, and information about how to purchase music from us!
Titles available from Choraegus
Annie Laurie
The Scottish song Annie Laurie (also known as Maxwelton Braes), is about a young woman, a soldier, and their romance. Although her father opposed their marriage, the story of their love still remains today.
Here’s a demonstration video using our antique set of Taylor handbells from England:
Country Gardens
“How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know; those we miss you’ll surely pardon
Daffodils, heart’s ease and flox, meadowsweet and lady smocks
Gentain, lupine and tall hollyhocks, roses, foxgloves, snowdrops,
Blue forget-me-nots in an English country garden.”
Flow Gently, Sweet Afton
There’s written poetry, and there’s musical poetry. In Flow Gently, Sweet Afton, verse by Robert Burns weds a tune by Jonathan Spilman to become this arrangement. It also is known as the hymn As Rain from the Clouds.
Greensleeves
There are many stories about this tune. Some historical references say that Henry VIII wrote it… but it had to be someone else because it was written after he’d died. However, it was “on the charts” by Shakespeare’s time, so it’s been around for quite a while, and often appears during Christmas in the form of What Child is This?
My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
Here’s our 12-bell arrangement of the popular Scottish folk song!
Shenandoah
This American folk tune, also known as Across the Wide Missouri, speaks of journeying through the American Midwest. It’s idyllic tune has inspired many settings – and here’s the twelve-bell one!
The Skye Boat Song
This 19th-century Scottish song is also the setting for the hymn Spirit of God, Unseen as the Wind, by Margaret Old. It’s recently been used as the theme tune for the TV series Outlander!
