Here’s the latest addition to our 8-bell repertoire; the beautiful 19-century hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee (hymn tune BETHANY).
This arrangement is suitable for 2-4 ringers. We demonstrate it as a 4-in-hand duet, but four ringers could also play it holding two bells each.
Where to find the sheet music
If you’d like to play Nearer, My God, to Thee, 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 making a purchase from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this guide with pictures, to make the purchase and download process (we hope) a stress-free experience.
Choraegus 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?
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 be happy to help. We hope you’ll enjoy playing our music!
Here’s one of our new favorite 8-bell arrangements – Beach Spring – for 8 bells. Many popular hymn texts have been set to this tune. For example, Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy, Lord Whose Love Through Humble Service and Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing. It’s a very versatile tune, suitable for services throughout the church calendar.
Our demonstration video was recorded on just our third attempt at playing this piece. It’s less polished than we’d have liked, but the notes are accurate, so it should give you a good idea of how the piece sounds. We had a request to publish this arrangement quickly, but at some point we’ll hope to record a better demonstration video!
Sheet music is available from Choraegus
If you’d like to play Beach Spring for 8 bells, 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 Choraegus music, we also 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.
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!
Mfurahini, Haleluya is the traditional Swahili title for the popular hymn most commonly sung as Christ Has Arisen, Alleluia. This lively tune is from Tanzania, and is particularly suitable for Easter! We recorded the video a couple of weeks ago, before the snow arrived here in West Michigan.
For extra entertainment value, watch the video carefully. You might notice a black squirrel running across the garden behind us. It’s not the first time one of our rehearsal videos has featured a squirrel!
How to get the sheet music for Mfurahini, Haleluya
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. If you haven’t bought music from Choraegus before, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide in an attempt to make the purchasing process stress-free!
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. A single purchase of this 8-bell title gives you permission to print up to 4 copies for your group. Please don’t pay for more copies than you need!
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 titles are available from 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 do what we can to help!
Yay! Free handbell music! After our busy holiday season, we were happy to be able to start the new year by working on some brand-new eight-bell music to be published on Choraegus. The first of these new pieces is Dona Nobis Pacem.
The scene outside our window would look so much prettier with some snow!
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 want to grab the free music and go, we don’t mind at all. It’s a good way to try our eight-bell music without having to spend any money! Dona Nobis Pacem would also be very suitable for playing as a quartet; useful for those times when you’re working with less than a full handbell choir.
Instructions for downloading the free handbell music
To get your free sheet music, add it to your cart on the Choraegus site, and click on the yellow “Check out with PayPal” button. 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.
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 do what we can to help!
The holiday season tends to start early in the handbell world. We’ve been rehearsing Christmas music with the Kalamazoo Ringers for a number of weeks now. However, we put off starting our own Christmas duet practising until after our Be Still, My Soul concert in Gregory.
The time is now here, and we’re starting to work on Christmas music. We’re getting ready for the first of our holiday performances, at the Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland, on Friday, November 29th. This European-style market is an annual event here in Holland, and this will be our third year there. It’s always a fun and festive shopping opportunity, and a chance to enjoy delicious food and watch interesting demonstrations by local craftspeople.
We still have some limited availability for holiday handbell performances in December – so if you’d like West Michigan’s smallest handbell choir to come and play at your event, worship service or holiday party, please get in touch. If we can’t fit you into our schedule for this year, let’s plan early for 2020!
We’re thrilled to be able to share this video of Larry’s original compositionA Minor Crash, recorded at the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. This piece is fun to play! You can even see some of the musicians dancing along, which is exciting to see at a handbell performance!
Rocking out to A Minor Crash!
A Minor Crash is written for 5-8 octaves of handbells and optional handchimes. An additional cajón part is available. The cajón part is written by Alex Guebert, who also plays it in the concert video. It’s a Level 4 piece, with some interesting challenges for bass handbell enthusiasts. There’s also an alternative simplified section for less-adventurous performers!
Sheet music for A Minor Crash
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus.
Many thanks to Pierpont Productions
Our thanks go to Pierpont Productions, who graciously allowed us to share the video from the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. They make a wonderful recording of the Bay View handbell concert each year. CDs and videos of previous concerts are available. If you’d like one, contact us, and we’ll put you in touch!
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!
Gaudete! (meaning “Rejoice!”) is a sacred Christmas carol, first published in 1581 in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Finnish/Swedish sacred songs. Choraegus is pleased to present this new Level 4+ arrangement by Larry Sue.
The piece is for 3-8 octaves of handbells, with optional handchimes. It’s a lively arrangement that we hope your handbell choir will have fun playing! A cajón accompaniment is also available.
Where to get the music for Gaudete!
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus. For just $25 (plus $5 for the cajón part), you can print up to 15 copies, so you only need to pay once for your whole choir. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you’re buying music from Choraegus for the first time, please read the Licensing Agreement before you make your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help make the purchase and download process stress-free!
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer; no more waiting for music to arrive in the mail!
Any questions?
If you have any questions, you’re always welcome to contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
