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I can’t tell you how happy I am that our new Director of Music has reinstituted the handbell choir at our parish! As you may remember, I was crushed when our former director took a new job last spring, prematurely ending our season. And while some of us made the decision not to continue (a few people were traveling long distances from other parishes), we are now a group of four and hopefully growing.
Everything looks very different from this new perch. We’re getting back to basics on our musical skills, and this has been a real exercise in humility for me. There’s no fancy knocking with two bells in one hand for me now—and no pieces without piano accompaniment just yet, a great blessing when you consider how easy it is to wander off the rails a cappella. Because of our numbers, Evan has also devised new arrangements, wisely opting in favor of accuracy by assigning us just two bells each, with perhaps an accidental or two.
As a choir director, Evan is like a kind shepherd—if he was expecting a more talented flock, he hasn’t let on. (I speak only for myself here, as I have lately rediscovered my true weakness as a liturgical musician.) Rather, he immediately assumed a lot of duties we used to do for ourselves. Everything in my book is lined up according to its position in the order of worship, and my bells are all marked for me at the top of my page. Before we play a single note, he calls our attention to the neat little octave of bells we are using for each piece. There is a satisfying logic to the way he has us practice the pieces that are in the same key before we move on to a different one. And when he had us play through the entire liturgy before we returned to drill our mistakes, he even asked us to be quiet as we transitioned our bells, just as we will do at mass.
Though it looks easy, playing in a handbell choir is a cognitive challenge for me. Cues come up quickly, and it’s easy to miss them (I’m just hoping to improve neuroplasticity here). When I first started, I remember feeling like Lucy and Ethel on the assembly line, eating chocolates as they went by because I’d failed to deposit them in the boxes correctly. Even now, I’m often appalled at how much I’ve forgotten at practice since the previous week. Sometimes I play as though I’ve never seen the piece before! But even my worst mistakes bring only an offer of help. While serving as both director and accompanist, Evan conducts with facial expressions and gestures; and when I failed to come in on time after a transition, he kindly asked me if he wasn’t nodding firmly enough. Oh, dear! If I had only looked up, I would certainly have seen him nodding. But I was too busy looking for the D sharp I had to play next. So, Evan adapted the score, putting in a quarter rest to give me more time to transition. It’s so wonderful to see humility in action like that.
It was raining when we reported for warmup at seven-thirty on Sunday morning. Evan had brought the entire liturgical music operation, including the cantor, down to the piano on the main floor in the back of church where our handbell tables are located. For our sake, the congregation fasted that day not only from the organ but from a mic on the piano and even from the proclamation of the psalm in the ambo. We were cozy in back on that rainy morning; attendance was rather light, as the forecast was due to improve before the next mass. But this gave Bonnie, our cantor and an experienced music educator, a chance to encourage us as we ran through our pieces. Somehow, I got totally flustered during practice. But I was determined that my most disastrous mistakes would not follow me into the mass, and somehow, they didn’t. Sure, I missed a few notes. But I didn’t get lost, and I didn’t play that D sharp at the wrong time. Perhaps Evan was pleasantly surprised. He was probably praying for us, because he seems like that kind of person. How grateful we are.
Joan Elizabeth Bauer 