When the church bells of France or Italy ring out in the sparkling air. they are apt to sound joyously at random or to strike the lilting cadence of a set tune. But such lightheartedness seems foreign and effete to English campanologists. Their idea of a rousing time in the belfry is to ring changesmathematical permutations of a series of carefully tuned bells. To untrained ears, ringing changes sounds like the din of boilermakers at work, but the English love the arithmetical beauty of it all.
Begun as a sport by aristocrats in the 17th century, scientific bell ringing fell into disrepute...
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