Hello Fellow Area 10 Campanologists!
I’m excited to be involved in spreading my love for handbells and handchimes. I was fortunate to first play handbells and handchimes in elementary school, and it was love at first ring! This was very much during the time of “The Great Handbell War,” as NPR called it. I was proud to report that we played “only Malmarks.” I laugh about it now, but it was serious stuff to a 7th-grader! I played in handbell choirs every year until I graduated from high school, but then there was sadly no handbell program at any of the universities I attended.
Fast forward to 2013 and the HMA National Seminar in Portland, Oregon. I had just gotten back to ringing with a community group when a family member mentioned the National Seminar and I decided to go so I could learn how to repair handbells. I ended up attending the entire event and found out “The Great Handbell War'' had ended. I attended both repair classes for Malmark and Schulmerich bells, even though I only really needed to know about Schulmerichs at the time, since that’s what my community group had.
The next year, I agreed to direct the children’s community handbell group. I’d been teaching classroom music for several years at the local church school which included preparing and directing all the music at the annual Christmas program. But directing bells was a whole new experience for me, and I leaned heavily on Martha L. Thompson’s book, “Handbell Helper.”
I then decided I wanted to start a handbell group at the church school where I was teaching music, and bought a two-octave set of 70’s era Schulmerichs that I polished and fixed up. Jubilate Deo! was made up of students from the 6th to the 12th grades and we met after school twice a week. After we were together for a year, I managed to get an old 3 octave set of Malmarks donated to the school. A grant from Handbell Musicians of America allowed me to replace a few broken handles plus all the springs and clapper heads. I was really glad I had attended the repair class at National Seminar!
But alas, like all good things, the after-school group had to end when the school stopped offering high school. A new principal came to the school with a background in music education, so I stopped teaching music there. I am happy to say the school is still using the bells, though.
My personal interest in handbells continued growing, despite not leading a group anymore. I was able to attend several Coppers Classic and Siskiyou Summit events, and fell in love with playing bass bells and bass chimes. I added a 3rd octave to my personal set of Schulmerichs, and a three octave set of Malmark chimes. I’ve now started solo ringing, but I’m still very much a beginner! I’ve discovered it’s very different from playing as a member of a group.
Nowadays, I teach reading for an online school. But I’ve just been asked to teach music for them as well this year. So that will be a new experience for me! I welcome any advice on teaching music in Zoom.
Handbells and handchimes are an (almost) instantly accessible way for beginners to experience the joy of making music. I’m so happy I can spread my love of handbells and handchimes by way of the handchime loan program, so that even more of us may experience the joy of expressing ourselves through music.
With all that’s gone on in our lives over the past two years, making more music is what all of us need. As Leonard Bernstein said best, “"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
Heather Dixon, Oregon State Chair