In my previous article, I mentioned this composition of 14-spliced surprise royal by Richard Weeks, which came up in CompLib as a composition that contains Vincula.
The Richard Weeks composition is a cyclic 9-part with no calls, therefore using a link method to achieve the change of coursing order to move from one part-end to the next.
Actually, for a peal of cyclic surprise royal, one lead of a link method isn't enough, because there are 13 other leads and they can't all be in the same course. The Richard Weeks composition uses two link methods. One is Vincula, at the end of the part, and the other is Fyne, roughly half way through the part.
Fyne has appeared in a few compositions by Alan Reading. The name is a reference to Loch Fyne, home of the iconic Inveraray Bell Tower where the first composition containing Fyne was rung. The line is shown above, taken from CompLib. Looking at 5th, 7th and 9th place bells we see a 10-bell version of Uxbridge/Lessness backwork, which is straightforward and has potential for repeated 6-bell runs in the 4-pull dodges. The frontwork looks quite treble-bobby, which is interesting because the major methods with Uxbridge backwork extend well to maximus but not to royal; the reason is that adding an extra cycle of treble bob hunting in the front four places requires an extra 16 rows but a lead of surprise royal is only 8 rows longer than a lead of surprise major. In the frontwork of Fyne we can see some features of Uxbridge (the end of 2nd place bell) but without any double dodges, and some features of Lessness (the Yorkshire frontwork in 4th place bell, although it's in the opposite direction). But look at the place bell order: instead of the standard F-group sequence (2 3 5 7 9 0 8 6 4), 3 and 4 have swapped places to give 2 4 5 7 9 0 8 6 3. Consequently, the method doesn't have Plain Bob lead ends, and if we look at the first lead end, which is 1362485079, and read off the coursing order, we have 097546328. Two pairs of consecutive bells have jumped over each other, with the transposition 3246 -> 4632.
In Richard Weeks' composition, the part begins with a sequence of seven methods producing the lead end
1860492735
which is still in the plain course. I'm not so interested in what the methods are, but along the way there are plenty of runs, as we would hope in a cyclic composition. Next comes a lead of Fyne, producing
1698074523
which has the coursing order 096875324 in which 09 and 68 have swapped. After five more leads of various methods we get the lead end
1906482735
and then there is a lead of Vincula with 9 and 0 as the extra hunt bells, so they return to 2nd and 3rd places and the next lead end (which is the part end) is
1902345678
Quite neat.
I wondered whether this idea would help with my on-and-off project of composing a nice cyclic quarter peal of royal. Can we keep the structure of Fyne and Vincula, and replace the intervening sequences of leads with a single lead in each case? Yes we can!
From the beginning of the part to the beginning of the lead of Fyne, the tenor moves from 10th place to 4th place, so to replace that sequence we need a method with place bell order -3. That place bell order gives a three-lead course so it's not a traditional one to use, but conveniently, ringing Sgurr A' Chaorachain with a 2nd place lead end gives place bell order -3 and the method has been named just Sgurr (potentially a little ambiguous, because Sgurr A' Chaorachain is sometimes referred to as Sgurr for short).
From the end of the lead of Fyne to the beginning of the lead of Vincula, the tenor moves from 5th place to 3rd place, so we need a method with place bell order +1 and Bristol will do the trick.
1440 Spliced Surprise Royal (4m) Composed by Richard Weeks Arranged by Simon J. Gay 234567890 ------------------ Sgurr 860492735 Fyne 698074523 Bristol 906482735 Vincula 902345678 ------------------ 9 part.
While exploring this idea, I realised that another possibility is to use two leads of Vincula as a link, like this:
1440 Spliced Surprise Royal (2m) Composed by Simon J. Gay 234567890 -------------------- Yorkshire 573920486 Yorkshire 907856342 Vincula 906482735 Vincula 902345678 -------------------- 9 part.
Replacing Yorkshire with Horsleydown (Bristol with 2nd place at the lead end) gives a few more runs.