[Bell Historians] Sharp Treble?

[Carl S Zimmerman]

After thinking about this matter, I've built a new Webpage which 
attempts to address this subject in a slightly different way. You 
can find it at
http://www.gcna.org/data/NotationSM.html
where it is linked from both chime and ring pages. I welcome 
comments, suggestions and corrections.

Specific to Mike's remarks (below), I would add only this: In music, 
the adjectives "sharp" and "flat" refer to notes that are a half-tone 
away from the note which the adjective modifies. The ringing terms 
"sharp 2" and "flat 6" are consistent with this. "Sharp treble", 
however, is not so clear, at least as I see it. That term should 
imply that the next "normal" treble would be a whole tone above the 
present treble; thus it would be wrong to call the treble of a 13 the 
"sharp treble" of a 12. (But one could call the treble of an 11 the 
sharp treble of a 10.) Ronald Dove's original term "extra treble" is 
much clearer, I think.

At 06:53 +0000 on 2002/10/02, Mike Chester wrote:

> >I gather a peal has been rung on a true thirteen at Redcliffe),so
>>should we not be classing such towers
>> as a ring of thirteen plus semitone.
>
>I think we need to consider why that bell was placed in the tower. 
>It was, in every case, put there to allow a light 10 to be rung. 
>Only incidentally can the 13 be rung in most cases. 
>
>There are quite a number of towers with a sharp treble and a flat
>6th, how many 13 bell peals have been rung on them? Hardly any!
>
>The fact that this bell is traditionally called a sharp treble only
>confirms to me that it is not intended to be used with the 12 bell
>ring, but only as an "add on" for the purpose of the light 10.
>
>Mike

The situation described in Mike's last paragraph is used as the last 
illustration in the section "Augmented chimes and rings" on the 
Webpage identified above.

-- 
=Carl Scott Zimmerman= Co-Webmaster: http://www.gcna.org/
Voicemail: +1-314-361-5194 (home) mailto:csz_stl at s...
Saint Louis, Missouri, USA - 19th c. home of up to 33 bell foundries