Handbell Compositions: 5152 Yorkshire Surprise Major (No. 2) by Peter J Sanderson

In the previous article, about Bernard Taylor's composition of Yorkshire, I quoted his comment that Peter Sanderson had produced a similar composition. I think it must be this one, which is also in the handbell compositions section of www.ringing.info.

5152 Yorkshire S Major (No.2)
Peter J Sanderson

23456   M  W  H
---------------
35264   2  2
56423   -  2  3
25463      -
63254   2  -
52436   -  -
23645   -  2
63542   -     3
42635   2  -   
23456   2  2  3
---------------

Here are the coursing orders.

  
  M      W      H
53462
53624  36524
       65324
65243  52643
       26543  25463
              24653
              26543
       65243
65432
65324  53624
53246  32546
32465  24365
       43265
43652         46532
              45362
              43652
43526
43265  32465
32654
32546  25346
       53246  52436
              54326

Indeed it is very similar - also a palindrome, and with the same handbell-friendly properties (12 courses of coursing for 3-4 and 5-6. The difference is that there is only one block of 3 wrongs in each half, and it has a block of 3 homes inserted into it instead of the other separate block of 3 wrongs. I think I prefer Bernard Taylor's composition, because it's a little more regular. Let's see how it works out in practice.

Handbell compositions

Yorkshire

Major (8 bells)

Comments

Handbell compositions

On Complib, the option is available for someone, or a group of people, to produce a music scheme for handbells. As a collective, can we develop a scheme for submission to Graham John? This is potentially problematic because people will have differing views on what makes a good handbell composition and of course different stages and methods have different requirements. On 8 bells, my own general preferences are: Coursing pairs, 5678s and 6578s, 8765s. Front and back. 5 and 6 coursing the tenors Little bell runs. The above contains a mixture of coursing positions and desirable music. Any thoughts?

Handbell music

Are you thinking that you want a different set of musical criteria for handbell compositions, or that defining a music scheme would be a way of scoring a composition for handbell-friendliness? I like the way that CompLib shows the percentage of each position for each handbell pair. Maybe this could be used to produce a single handbell-friendliness score, by combining the percentages of coursing for different pairs, or looking at the number of different positions rung by each pair. I think this would need to be different for different numbers of bells. For example, for Surprise Royal we would normally stick with 7-8 being unaffected rather than trying to get them coursing.