The peculiarities of ringing beaters

Beaters’ ring is our ancient tradition. Recently the temples have begun using metallic beaters in the form of flat plates.

One of such beaters’ dignities is their quality of sounding. The beaters are made of rolled metal, which is more intimate and solid in comparison with bells’ founded material. It doesn’t have abscesses, micro fissures; it’s more constant in gage, that’s why beaters’ sound is usually pure (without aberration and “croaking”) and usually lasts for 1-2 minutes (10-30 seconds for good bells, according to their weight and quality). Not all bell-ringers can get used to such long beaters’ sounding (“melodiousness").

The other beaters’ peculiarity is their sound which is lower than bells' one. As it was noticed in practice, low bells’ tones affect the person smoother than high. That’s why it was popular to found massive bells, of hundreds and thousands poods in weight (though there was an element of prestige here).

Beaters’ peculiarity is also concerned in the fact that the bell-ringer can choose the most melodious place for a verberation himself, putting the wanted overtone to the first place instead of the main one, though the basic tone is counted when beating to the centre.

Despite of existing canons and rules of orthodox ring, the bell-ringer has a wide range of means to transfer beaters’ ring to the real art. Choosing not only the bell loft with a corresponding range of beaters, but also varying the rhythm and sound colour in a certain verberation's place, as well as frequency spectra and verberation’s force, changing hammers of different weight and material according to the character of ring (celebratory, funeral, etc.), you can achieve different musical expression in the orthodox ring.

Undoubtedly, with beaters’ spreading in Russia, Both technology of their production and technology of ringing them will be perfected. Nowadays there exist some bell-ringers, who aren’t inferior to bell-ringers, playing the bells, in their mastery and ring's beauty on beaters.

All the objective suppositions tell that the tradition of (wooden and metallic) beaters’ use will exist in orthodox ring for a long time. Besides, I want to mark that the right to use beaters as well as bells in the orthodox ring, and the impossibility to contradistinguish them, is mentioned in the unique Canon of orthodox ring, approved by Synod Liturgical Committee and established by Holy Patriarch of Moscow and entire Russia Alexey II on August 26, 2002 (see the church ring’s Canon of the Russian Orthodox Church).

V. Sharikov