The Last Word On Nothing

After my voice lesson Sunday afternoon, I heard bells. Eight bells, ringing on and on. My voice lessons are in the bowels of Washington National Cathedral – a real live Gothic cathedral, hand-carved over the last 107 years by bearded Englishmen, or at least the group included one bearded Englishman who lives in my neighborhood. The cathedral’s tallest tower holds 10 bells known as peal bells, because they’re for playing peals like this one.

Peal bells are used for mathematical playing, not melodic; as the website of the North American Guild of Change Ringers explains, a peal goes through the bells by number, switching the order each time, so a four-bell “method” – apparently the little bits of music are called “methods” – might start like this, where each number is a bell:

1 2 3 4
2 1 4 3
2 4 1 3
4 2 3 1
4 3 2 1
3 4 1 2
3 1 4 2
1 3 2 4
1 2 3 4

That’s the simplest one, called “Plain Hunt.” Ringers memorize these methods and play them when the conductor calls them out.

Change ringing is an English tradition, to go with our English cathedral. A 1934 mystery novel by Dorothy Sayers starts with a nine-hour peal (a car accident strands Lord Peter Wimsey in the remote village, so he pitches in) and ends—well, I won’t tell you how it ends. It’s The Nine Tailors; find out for yourself.

If you have read it, you know that the bells are extremely loud. Ringers don’t even stand in the same room as the bells. They stand on a lower level, one person to a bell, pulling the ropes in time so the the bells turn, clang, and send their sound waves out through the air.

While I sat on a bench and listened, I noticed another sound: a cicada in the tree above me. It’s the tail end of summer, the time of year for annual cicadas. The better-known cicadas are the periodic cicadas, which come out every 13 or 17 years. The D.C. area’s biggest batch visited in 2004 and are waiting underground now for their next chance at mating, 2021. But other species of cicadas come out every summer. I don’t know which I was listening to, but I do know that it made the air sound hot and summery. While I was recording this video, I hoped that I was capturing the cicadas and not just the bells; now I see I didn’t need to worry.

After 45 minutes, the end came. The bells lined up: 87654321 87654321 87654321 they called, down the scale, then silence.

The cicadas rang on.

photo: Orhan Cam, Shutterstock