I wrote a little about choice of peal compositions for London, after our peal, but there's more to say. I searched BellBoard for handbell peals of London to see what other conductors have called. The Henry Dains composition, and Middleton's, appear quite a lot, along with two others that are worth considering for another time.
The first is by H Law James, who along with his brother E Bankes James was a leading figure in ringing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The composition appears several times in CompLib in different variations, but the basic idea is as follows.
First consider a 5-part composition consisting of 5 Befores with 3 Homes at the end of each part:
3200 London Surprise Major B H 23456 ----------- - 3 35264 - 3 56342 - 3 64523 - 3 42635 - 3 23456 -----------
Next, it's possible to insert either 3 Middles or 3 Wrongs (but not both) into each part:
5440 London Surprise Major M B H 23456 -------------- 3 - 3 35264 3 - 3 56342 3 - 3 64523 3 - 3 42635 3 - 3 23456 --------------
Why not 3 Middles and 3 Wrongs in one part like this?
M B W H 23456 ----------------- 3 - 3 3 35264 -----------------
Well, look at the coursing orders:
M B W
-------------------
53462
53624
53246 65324 53624
36524
65324
-------------------
M B W is a round block, moving from 53624 back to 53624 and so that course is rung from M to M and again from W to W. It is, however, possible to replace any of the blocks of 3M with a block of 3W in the same part. Well, now we have 5440 which is too long, so the obvious idea is to remove a block of 3 somewhere, but unfortunately that reduces the length to 4992. Instead we can stick with 3M B 3W in one part and fix the falseness by simply dropping the little round block of M B W. We still have to remove a block of 3 to reduce the length. This gives the final composition:
5024 London Surprise Major H Law James M B W H 23456 ----------------- 2 2 3 35264 - 3 56342 3 - 3 64523 3 - 3 42635 3 - 3 23456 -----------------
Another way to look at it is that in one part we now have a Middleton's block (2M 2W 3H), so instead of shortening Middleton's by replacing 2M 2W by B in one part, we have started with all Befores and lengthened by introducing 2M 2W in one part. As I said, the 3M can be swapped for 3W in each part independently. One possibility, also rotating the whole composition and omitting 3H instead of 3M, gives a palindromic form:
5024 London Surprise Major H Law James M B W H 23456 ----------------- 3 - 3 35264 3 - 3 56342 2 2 3 64523 - 3 3 42635 - 3 23456 -----------------
This isn't one of the variations published in CompLib, because omitting the 3H at the end misses out the music with 5-6 in their home position. The closest version is this one, which also has a memorable shape:
5024 London Surprise Major H Law James M B W H 23456 ----------------- 3 - 3 35264 3 - 3 56342 2 2 64523 - 3 3 42635 - 3 3 23456 -----------------
Moving on from H Law James, another composition that appears several times on BellBoard is this one by Tony Cox:
5088 London Surprise Major Anthony J Cox M B W 23456 -------------- - - 35426 - - 52436 2 s 32564 s - s 36425 s 2 62453 - 42356 -------------- 3 part.
A 3-part with 5-6 fixed always looks good for handbells. Also, CompLib shows that this one has 45% coursing for both 3-4 and 5-6.
Notice the palindromic block within the part:
M B W ------- 2 s s - s s 2 -------
It's followed by a Middle, so if the initial M B M B could be replaced by W, the whole part would be a palindrome. Actually M B M B has the same effect as W, but doing the replacement makes the composition false because the plain course occurs from H to W at the beginning and again from M to H at the end. Also it would be too short.
Now that we've tuned back into London we should ring another peal, for Peter, so that will give me a chance to try one of the other compositions - probably the Tony Cox one.