Tag Archives: handbell music

Kelvingrove – 2-3 Octave Handbell Music

Larry’s latest 2-3 octave handbell arrangement is the traditional Scottish tune Kelvingrove. This popular traditional melody was first published in The Harp of Kenfrewshire, a collection of songs published in Scotland around 1820. The author’s name is given as John Sim.

“Let us haste to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O,
Through its mazes let us rove, bonnie lassie, O:
Where the rose in all her pride,
Paints the hollow dingle side,
Where the midnight fairies glide, bonnie lassie, O.”

Kelvingrove as church music

In recent years, the Kelvingrove tune has become popular in churches, with the title Will You Come and Follow Me? (The Summons) and lyrics written in 1987 by John L. Bell and Graham A. Maule. Here’s a video by the Carillon Choir at Third Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan:

Would you like to play Kelvingrove?

This arrangement of Kelvingrove is for 2-3 octaves of handbells. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to purchase from Choraegus.

If you haven’t purchased music from Choraegus before, we recommend reading our step-by-step guide. We designed this in an attempt to make the purchasing process as stress-free as possible!

Please note that Choraegus handbell music will come to you as a digital download; a PDF file. You’ll be responsible for printing your own sheet music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. The advantage of having downloadable sheet music is not having to wait to receive it. You can make your purchase, print out the music, and be ready to start rehearsing with your handbell choir! For 2-3 octave handbell music, your purchase (pay once only) entitles you to print and maintain up to 15 copies for your group.

Any questions?

Please let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll be happy to help!

2-3 octave handbell music - Kelvingrove

Thanks for an Exciting Holiday Season!

We’re coming to the end of our exciting holiday season of Christmas handbell performances. This was our busiest season yet, and we’d like to thank everyone who helped to make the last few weeks so much fun!

Our Christmas started early this year, with a Holiday Open House event. We enjoyed playing handbell duets at Ditto Upscale Resale, here in Holland. It was a great way to welcome the season. It was also good to check that we still had the stamina to play for three hours at a time without collapsing. It’s a useful skill when we play our duets at the Salvation Army Red Kettle!

An exciting holiday season for Larry and Carla
Christmas handbell duets at the Ditto Upscale Resale Holiday Open House

We continued our season with performances at several church events. These included a Christmas By Candlelight event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and our first visit to Cultivate Community Church in Hamilton.

We’ve very much enjoyed being part of the arts community here in Holland. It’s been fun to share our music at community events such as the Kerstmarkt. This is an annual European-style Christmas market in downtown Holland. When Carla lived in England, a highlight of Christmas was being able to visit traditional markets in London, Bath and Lincoln. Even though the market here in Holland is on a much smaller scale, the atmosphere is the same. The chilly weather also makes it extra festive! Our bells survived the cold, and we managed to play for several hours on a Saturday morning and Friday evening. Here’s a video of one of the pieces we played there:

If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available from Choraegus!

Back to the Van Andel Institute

This year we played Christmas music for residents and their guests at several senior living communities and care home Christmas parties. It’s always fun to share our Christmas music with appreciative audiences of all ages. We were excited to make another visit to the Van Andel Institute, to welcome guests to their employees’ holiday party. The Van Andel Institute definitely gets the prize for the most-impressive Christmas tree!

Larry Sue, handbell musician
Larry at the 2018 Van Andel Institute Employees’ Holiday Party

We were happy to continue our collaboration with the Zeeland Community Band, joining with them for their popular annual Christmas concert.

Zeeland Community Band
The Zeeland Community Band, directed by Rose Wiersma – Christmas Concert
Carla Sue, handbell musician
Carla at the Zeeland Community Band Christmas Concert

Special thanks go to:

Ditto Upscale Resale, Holland, MI
The Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland, MI
Friendship Christian Reformed Church, Byron Center, MI
Century Club of Holland, MI
Hope College Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP)
P.E.O. Sisterhood of Holland, MI
Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo, MI
Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, MI
First Presbyterian Church of Holland, MI
Cultivate Community Church, Hamilton, MI
D&W Fresh Market, Holland, MI
The Salvation Army of Holland, MI
The Village of Heather Hills, Grand Rapids, MI
Zeeland Community Band
Freedom Village of Holland, MI
Resthaven Care Center, Holland, MI
Friends of the Gary Byker Library, Hudsonville, MI
Resthaven Maple Woods, Holland, MI
Grandville Ladies’ Literary Club, Grandville, MI
Kentwood Women’s Club, Kentwood, MI
Third Reformed Church of Holland, MI

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this such an exciting holiday season for us. If you’d like to book us for your event in the coming year, please let us know!

exciting holiday season
Christmas by Candlelight at Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo

New Music for Handbells – Silent Night

Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

After more than six years of arranging and performing eight-bell Christmas music, we finally managed to publish an arrangement of the popular Austrian carol Silent Night. 

We recorded our video at the Kerstmarkt. This is a European-style Christmas market that takes place annually in downtown Holland, Michigan. It was a cold, breezy and rainy Saturday morning, but it’s still one of our favorite events of the holiday season.

Would you like to play this arrangement?

If you’re still looking for Christmas music for handbells, Silent Night is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. For Christmas 2018, you can get it for the special price of just $3, with permission to print up to 4 copies for your group.

If you haven’t bought music from us before, please read the licensing agreement before making your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide to buying music from Choraegus. As with all our music for handbells, Silent Night comes to you as a digital download. You’ll be responsible for printing the music yourself, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about our music for handbells, Silent Night in particular, or anything else on our website, please ask! You can look at our Frequently-Asked Questions, but if you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

handbells - Silent Night

A Look Back at the 21st Annual Rietberg Concert

We were honored to be invited to present the 21st Annual Rietberg Concert at Third Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. This annual concert is a tribute to the 45 years of service of Roger and Evelyn Rietberg to the music program of Third Reformed Church. This year’s concert was given in memory of Evelyn Rietberg, who changed the lives of so many children at the church.

Normally at this time of year, we’d have started rehearsing our Christmas music. However, this year we had two fall concert performances. That gave us a good reason to postpone practising most of the Christmas music and focus on other music instead. We did include just a handful of Christmas pieces in the repertoire, because handbells and Christmas go together so well. After all, Christmas is only a few weeks away!

Here’s the concert program:

Handbells, organ and flute together!

We’re grateful to Linda Strouf and Mary Van Voorst for sharing their musical talents with us at this concert. We’d made plans to play our duet arrangement of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee with organ accompaniment. That created a small challenge, because the organ at Third Reformed is located at the rear of the sanctuary, upstairs in the balcony. Before the concert, we set up duplicate bells in the balcony. When the time came, Linda played a J.S. Bach piece to give us time to get from the front of the church, up the stairs and onto the balcony, ready to play Joyful, Joyful. The plan worked perfectly! Linda played another organ piece while we made our way back down the stairs, and to the front of the church again.

21st Annual Rietberg Concert

A highlight of the concert, for us, was the opportunity to play our arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High, complete with piano and flute accompaniment. This was only the third time the piece has been performed, and the flute accompaniment part is so new that we haven’t published it yet! Mary Van Voorst joined us to play the flute, and Linda made her way down from the balcony to play the piano part. We also enjoyed playing a couple of recent additions to our repertoire – Go, Tell It on the Mountain and Lucerna Laudoniae. Lucerna is one of our early arrangements that we brought back after not having played it for several years!

Roger Rietberg was at the concert!

We were surprised and pleased to be introduced to Roger Rietberg, who attended the concert with his son. Afterwards, we enjoyed a reception, where we had the opportunity to chat with members of the audience. It’s always fun to talk about our bells and music! Al and Jane Osman gave us flowers (look out for Osman’s Flowers and Firs at the Downtown Holland Farmers’ Market). These were perfect for a festive-looking photo with our bells!

Annual Rietberg Concert, Holland

Thank you!

Our thanks go to everyone who helped to make this concert possible – from planning the event, all the way to staying to clean up after the reception.

What’s next?

What’s next for us? Straight into Christmas and holiday music! We’ll be Ringing in the Season at Ditto Upscale Resale on Friday, November 16th, and playing outdoors at the Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland on November 23rd and 30th.

Rietberg Concert handbell duo
Relaxing at home after the concert!

New Handbell Music – Mu Süda Ärka Üles, arranged by Susan T. Nelson

We’re excited to announce that an arrangement of the Estonian folk song Mu Süda, Ärka Üles is now available from Choraegus! This arrangement is by Susan T. Nelson. We commissioned it to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary and Campanelli Handbell Ensemble’s visit to the USA from Estonia in July 2017.

The title of the piece translates as Awake, my Heart. This interesting and beautiful arrangement is scored for handbells (4-7 octaves). There are optional handchimes, a handbell duet part, alternate bells, and bar or wind chimes. Campanelli performed the piece for the first time at Estonian House, in New York City.

An opportunity to use your “alternate bells”!

In one of the performances during the Campanelli tour, a variety of “alternate bells” were also used: Petit & Fritsen and William Dunn handbells, Deagan Pear Bells and Whitechapel Cup Bells. These were all from Susan T. Nelson’s personal collection. However, the piece works perfectly well without the alternate bells, as demonstrated in the video recorded at the Estonian House concert.

In the video, we’re playing an augmented 8-bell duet part. Larry created this to give us slightly more of a challenge than Sue’s original duet part that accompanies the full-choir score. This augmented duet part is not essential to the piece, but you can purchase it as a separate add-on if you’d like to play it. Please note that the 8-bell duet part is not a stand-alone arrangement. We’ll be publishing an eight-bell duet version at some later date!

Would you like to play this piece?

If you’d like to play Mu Süda, Ärka Üles, you can download the handbell score from Choraegus. You’ll also find more music from Susan T. Nelson there!

The Campanelli tour was one of the highlights of 2017 for us, and this piece is a wonderful reminder of the happy times we shared with the group from Estonia. We hope other handbell ensembles will enjoy playing this piece as much as we all did!

Mu Süda, Ärka Üles, for handbells
With Campanelli Handbell Ensemble and composer Susan T. Nelson – at the Malmark factory

New 8-Bell Music for Advent and Christmas

The summer is ending (at least here in Michigan, anyway) and autumn is in the air. It’s the time of year when we start thinking about Christmas and holiday music – and we’re excited to be able to present some new eight-bell titles for this year!

Creator of the Stars of Night

This Advent hymn made it into our concert repertoire this year. We didn’t want to wait for Advent, so we performed it for the first time at the opening concert for the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 spring festival on Mackinac Island. This hymn was originally written somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries, and it works really well on handbells!

The Friendly Beasts

This melody first appeared in France in the 12th century, and was a very late addition to our Christmas performance repertoire last year; so late that we only had the opportunity to perform it once – at the Kerstmarkt (European-style Christmas market) in Downtown Holland. We’re looking forward to playing it more this holiday season!

The Cherry Tree Carol

If you’re looking for an unusual Christmas carol, this is a good one. It’s from Cornwall, England, from way back in Medieval times. It’s not difficult to play, and could also work well as a quartet piece.

Hoe lei dit Kendeke/Cold is this Little Child

Since we moved to Holland, Michigan, we’ve been having fun finding traditional Dutch melodies that can be played using just eight bells. This is a children’s carol that’s also sung in Belgium. It’s not difficult to play, and would also be particularly suitable for a quartet.

De Zak van Sinterklaas / Santa’s Bag

This is a cheery traditional Dutch Christmas song that’s been sung by many generations of children in The Netherlands. We found it during our search for Dutch music after moving from California to Holland!

Pat-a-Pan

This French carol was first published in 1720. It’s about the birth of Jesus, and the shepherds celebrating by playing flutes and drums. We don’t play either of those instruments, so here’s our handbell version:

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

We published the US version of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear a while ago, but this version is the one more often heard/sung in the UK.

How Great Our Joy

This traditional German carol was unknown to us until we heard it for the first time in church last year. Our version for eight handbells is great for practising dynamics!

Go, Tell It on the Mountain

This popular spiritual is fun to play, particularly if you’re a fan of syncopation!

From Starry Skies Descending

This Italian carol, Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle, is fast becoming one of our favorite carols to play!

This year’s eight-bell Christmas music definitely seems to have quite an international flavour. Remember to check out the other Christmas and holiday titles for eight bells on our music site. There are also some 12-bell Christmas pieces and some new titles for full handbell choir too. We hope you’ll find something you’ll enjoy playing!

8-bell music for Advent and Christmas

Music Binder Covers

Have you seen our music binder covers yet? In recent months we’ve enjoyed demonstrating our 8-bell music and teaching workshops at the Area 5 Spring Festival on Mackinac Island and the Area 8 “Bring It! Ring It!” festival in Omaha, Nebraska.

If you were at these festivals, and you looked at sample copies of our 8-bell music, you might remember that our music binders looked like this:

Music binder covers

Where to find these music binder covers

We’ve had several enquiries, so we decided to make these binder inserts available on our music site. If they’d be useful to you, you can download them free of charge from Choraegus.

We have Christmas/holiday and the-rest-of-the-year versions, for both our standard arrangements, and the surprisingly-easy versions too. Just pick the ones you need and download them, ready for printing.

Also in the Freebies section of our music site, you’ll find free scores to download for your handbell group. This free handbell music can be a great way to try out our 8-bell music without having to spend any money.

Let us know if you have more ideas!

If you have any other ideas for what you’d like to see available on Choraegus, please let us know. We’re always open to new ideas and suggestions!

Handbell Concert in Harbor Springs – the Program

Will you be at our handbell concert in Harbor Springs? We’ll be presenting a concert of 8-bell duets on Sunday, August 12th, at First Presbyterian Church. Here’s the concert program! As you can see, our concert will include a mixture of well-loved hymns, and beautiful traditional pieces from several different countries. We’ll also be joined by the Kirk Ringers of First Presbyterian Church for several pieces.

handbell concert in Harbor Springs, MI - Larry and Carla

We’re looking forward to this concert, in such a beautiful part of Michigan. Admission to the concert is free, with an opportunity for a free-will offering. We hope to see you there!

Would you like to host a handbell duet concert?

If you can’t attend our handbell concert in Harbor Springs, you might enjoy some of our handbell duet videos on our YouTube channel.

If a live performance is more your style, and you’re considering hosting a handbell duet concert at your church, please get in touch with us. As a handbell duo, we take up less space than a traditional handbell choir, and our transportation costs are lower. We can often combine a concert with playing our duets for a morning worship service too! We’re based in Holland, Michigan, but we’re happy to travel.

New Music for Handbells – I Vow To Thee, My Country

“I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best.
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there’s another country I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know.
We may not count her armies, we may not see her king,
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering.
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.”

I Vow to Thee, My Country is a much-loved British patriotic hymn. Sir Cecil Spring Rice wrote the lyrics, and Gustav Holst set them to music. The melody is adapted from a section of Jupiter from Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets. Nowadays, you might recognise it as the hymn tune THAXTED.

A much-loved patriotic hymn

I Vow to Thee, My Country has strong associations with Remembrance Sunday. Its patriotic text has ensured that it remains popular today. It was sung at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, and at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981. It was also sung at the funeral of the Princess of Wales in 1997, and at the memorial service ten years later. In 1982, Michael Perry wrote an alternative text for the THAXTED melody; O God Beyond All Praising.

We first performed our arrangement of I Vow to Thee, My Country on our last Sunday at Los Altos United Methodist Church, before we moved from California to Michigan. We played it in concert for the first time in Warner Robins, Georgia and again in concert at the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 Festival on Mackinac Island, and at the recent Area 8 Festival in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s not the easiest of our 8-bell arrangements! The middle section took us a while to learn, and still has the ability to surprise us sometimes. Still, it’s been a fun challenge.

Would you like to play this piece?

If you’d like to play I Vow To Thee, My Country, the sheet music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus. If you haven’t bought music from Choraegus before, we recommend our step-by-step guide. Please also note that our music is designed to be downloaded for you to print at home. You won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing this 8-bell arrangement gives you permission to print up to 4 copies for your group; you only need to pay once.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, please check our Frequently-Asked Questions! If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!

I Vow to Thee My Country - handbells