[r-t] A Review of Diary Compositions

[Alan Andrews]

All this talk about peal comps - some of the 1/4 peals ones are in need of
updating.  The surprise major ones come to mind.

Cheers,
Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Morrison" <dfmorrison at gmail.com>
To: <ringing-theory at bellringers.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: [r-t] A Review of Diary Compositions


> It's not clear to me that this thread is really the sort of thing
> Philip had in mind for "theory," but as it was started here I guess
> I'll reply to it here, too, until he tells us to take it elsewhere.
>
> I was part of the group (the then members of the CC Peals Compositions
> Committee) that discussed the contents of these pages a few years ago
> when they were last updated (other than some minor error corrections
> since), and can shed some light on the goals of the time. Even worse,
> I was personally responsible for two small errors introduced at that
> time, now fixed.
>
> The primary goal is almost simplicity, but not quite. It's really
> "things that would be easy to look up at the last minute when you need
> something, having met short or whatever." So while simplicity is a big
> part of that, "familiar" is another big part of it. It was *not*
> intended to be a source of compositions for new or inexperienced
> conductors -- rather for conductors desperately looking for something
> familiar at the last minute.
>
> While some of us were keen to replace some of the more old-fashioned
> compositions with equally simple but more modern ones, the consensus
> seemed to be in favor of keeping more of the old warhorses, in the
> belief that they would be more useful for people refreshing their
> memories at the last minute.
>
> As to the Kent Royal, it (as well as the Kent Major) was chosen
> largely in the belief that it is a method far more likely to be rung
> in hand than on tower bells. Personally there are particularly
> handbell friendly compositions of Kent Royal I like better, but I
> think that was thought to be the most familiar to the largest number
> of conductors.
>
> Things like Orion and Rigel were deliberately not included based on
> the argument that it would be most unlikely to show up for a peal
> missing someone, and thus have to "fall back" to such a method. There
> was some spirited argument about whether to include any twelve bell
> compositions at all!
>
> While obviously too late to update the peals for the 2005 Diary, it
> would likely be possible to update them again for 2006. So this thread
> is a useful contribution to thinking about what folks would like to
> see in the Diary. I will ensure this information does get back to the
> appropriate folks on the Ringing World Board, and to the Peal
> Compositions Committee to whom they would likely look again for
> advice.
>
>
>
> --
> Don Morrison <dfm at mv.com>
>
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