A Yorkshire pilgrimage

Submitted by simon on
Arthur Craven's headstone

While preparing my video about Yorkshire Maximus, I discovered that Arthur Craven, who composed Yorkshire Major and its extensions, is buried in Sheffield and has a marvellous headstone. Last weekend I happened to be in Sheffield visiting my sister, and we decided to go and find the grave.

Arthur Craven is also mentioned in my video about Bristol, as he was involved in the discussion about how to extend it from major to royal - although I'm not absolutely sure he was the originator of the extension as this obituary suggests.

Visiting Craven's grave was a bit of reconnaissance for an evolving idea. As the Central Council meeting and Ringing Roadshow will be taking place in Sheffield during the first weekend in September, I am hoping to assemble a handbell band to ring some Yorkshire next to the grave. Maybe even a quarter of either major or royal. In a while I will try to use the magic of Facebook to recruit ringers, but meanwhile if anyone is expecting to be within range on Saturday 6th September and would like to join in, please let me know.

General Progress
Yorkshire

What makes a method handbell-friendly?

Going through Simon's occasional series of handbell-friendly compositions, I have been giving some thought to what features make the method itself handbell-friendly.  Some methods do lend themselves well to handbells, while other methods are surprisingly tricky.  Here are some of my thoughts on some particular features and a 'handbell-friendliness' score...

Back to Horton's Four

To return to our Horton's Four project, we decided to ring a quarter of each method individually. I have written several articles about handbell-friendly compositions, but Horton's Four is an extreme example of ringing an ordinary composition (actually its difficulty makes it far from ordinary) on handbells, so I decided...

Cambridge Maximus

We are just back from a handbell weekend in Tulloch, hosted by Helen McGregor and Peter Bevis. Saturday was the general handbell day, with practice sessions and quarters including Plain Bob Minor (Thomas Gay's first quarter), Stedman Triples, Yorkshire Major and Kent Royal. We had also planned to spend Sunday...