[r-t] History

[Mark Davies]

JEC writes,

>> It is a good reason, because peal composition on seven bells is
>> constrained by the length of the extent.
>
> No it isn't.  That is begging the question (in the proper sense of the
> expression).

No, you are not understanding John. A touch of 5000 true changes is 
still constrained by the extent. Producing such a touch is an exercise 
in joining together "almost all" of the available changes. Compare with 
peal composition on higher numbers, where we are absolutely not limited 
by the availability of changes, and can pick and choose as we like. 
Here, we can compose for music.

The whole science of Triples peal composition is centred round the 
difficulty of getting a round block containing every possible change. If 
we relax that and say "oh, you must get every change, except you can 
leave 40 out if you like" then you have neither a mathematically pure 
concept, nor a wide artistic space for expressing your musical tastes. 
All you've got it a bit of a botch, because you happen to like base 10 
too much.

MBD